by TL Dyer
My toes are as good as ever. You were better than you think. And a proper gentleman. Will we see you next Friday, Steve the Copper?
I rub my hand over my mouth. This dancing, Salsa, is not my thing. But I enjoy Tricia’s company, she makes me laugh and she’s easy to talk to, no strings, no agendas. The sort of company you want after the fourth twelve-hour shift in a row down in the weeds with the less congenial side of humanity. Freddie’s about the extent of my social life at this point, and he’s just another reminder of work even when we try our best to steer clear of the topic. Tricia’s like a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale room. Then, of course, there’s her connection to Anna. Which is what this is really all about.
See you then, Tricia the Vet, I type back and tap send.
*
Dalston keeps the morning briefing briefer than normal. There have been sightings of Maxime Boucher in the area, the wife-battering prison escapee, so the sergeant wants us out on the street with our eyes peeled and not in here sat on our backsides. That said, it doesn’t stop him from calling me aside and waiting for everyone to leave the room before spilling what’s on his mind.
‘I had to put you single-crew, Steve.’
‘Not a problem,’ I say, happy enough to be going it alone. I slept well and feel good. Last thing I want is some sex-deprived grump for a partner bringing down my mood and judging my decisions.
But for a bloke who five minutes ago was eager to get out on the streets, Freddie-Boy now looks like he wishes he’d chosen a whole other career. He perches on the corner of the desk and points to the one opposite for me to do the same. If this is about the promotion, it would be a damn relief to have the offer taken off the table. I’ve already decided not to go for it. I’ve just got to figure out a way to tell Ange.
‘Thing is, mate,’ he says, looking me in the eye with something caught between annoyance and an apology. ‘There’s been a complaint.’
‘From who?’ I ask, thinking here we go again. It’ll be the pissed-up fella from the hospital yesterday, or some other scrote waving the human rights flag like a Get Out Of Jail Free card to cash in whenever they get themselves into trouble. This happens all the time. Idiots who think they can game the system just by putting in a complaint and filling out a form.
Except the sarge is shuffling on the desk as if his trousers are strangling his crotch. I haven’t seen him this uncomfortable since he admitted over a few gin shots one drunken night a few years back, to having slept with the girl I’d been seeing back when we were in policing college. All that was a long time ago, I’ve not been in touch with Shelley since that time, and certainly wouldn’t be now. But all the same, I try not to dwell on his confession, nor the reason he chose to get it off his chest. Because it was of little good to me.
‘I understand you gave two young women a lift home during your shift yesterday,’ he says.
So one of Anna’s friends made the complaint? A parent?
‘I did. They were being followed by a group of lads and I was concerned for their safety.’
The dip of Fred’s head informs me he’s not convinced. ‘That’s not the way I heard it, Steve.’
‘How did you hear it?’ I ask. But as soon as the words are out, the picture is forming. Smithy didn’t say a word when we booked off last night, nor this morning in the briefing room. But given his mood yesterday, I thought nothing of it. Now I see that he was avoiding me.
‘Look, Steve, do I really need to explain that you can’t go offering to give young women lifts home on police time? Or not on anyone’s time. It’ll only take one complaint.’
‘Complaint about what?’ I snap. ‘What are you insinuating, Fred?’
‘Don’t give me that, Steve. You know full well you overstepped the mark, I don’t care what your intentions were. What the hell you were thinking, though, I have no idea.’
‘Proactive policing.’
‘What?’
‘Proact—’
‘Yeah, I heard what you fucking said.’
It’s been a while since we’ve locked horns. It happens now and then, but for the most part we balance each other out. If he’s on the ceiling about something, I’ll coax him down; if he’s gone the other way – as he has done, more than once in his life, but he has selective memory over things like that – it’s me who yanks him up by his collar. I suppose I always thought he’d do the same for me. But right now he doesn’t seem willing to even consider my point of view.
‘Look, Sarge, whatever Neil said—’
‘Let’s leave your colleague out of this, shall we?’
So it was him. Smithy with his arse in his hand about some bird or some infection he’s picked up, and taking it out on me. I shake my head and snort a soft laugh.
‘Passion and diligence,’ I say, meeting his hard gaze with my own. ‘Isn’t that what you said?’
‘Within the boundaries of your job description, yes.’
‘Boundaries. Right. Of course.’
‘The thing is, Steve, you can’t save everyone.’
‘I’m not trying to.’
The words are as weak on my lips as they sound to my ears. Fred knows it too. He looks down to where his arms rest on his thighs and hands are clasped.
‘Look, mate. That’s two partners you’ve pissed off in the space of a few weeks.’
‘Two?’ I haven’t partnered with anyone else other than Smithy and— ‘Sacha?’
Freddie draws in a breath through his nose and looks up at me. Like that, his eyes are pitted in his skull, and when he speaks his voice is as low and reluctant as the ticking over of an old engine. ‘PC Sanderson requested partnering with someone else, Steve.’
I try to mentally rewind and replay the shifts I had with her, what I’d said and what I’d done, but it’s fuzzy at best. I can’t even remember what call-outs we attended other than Anna’s.
‘Why?’ I ask.
‘I’m not at liberty to say—’
‘Fred, please. If I’ve upset her...’
Smithy’s animosity I can deal with, but not Sacha’s. I thought we made a good team. I’d hoped she looked up to me as a peer with more experience on the job, someone she could turn to when she came up against something new she wasn’t sure how to handle.
The sergeant rubs a hand over his mouth, his eyes softening, but I can see I’m making this uncomfortable for him. There’s a thin line between our work and our friendship, and even after all these years, I’m not sure how far either might stretch.
‘Some of your attitudes, mate,’ he lowers his voice to say. ‘She thinks the thing with the girl...’
‘What thing? What girl?’
‘Steve.’
‘No, what thing?’
What girl? Say her name, Fred. Do you even remember it?
‘The RTC. The young woman who died. Sacha thought...’
‘Thought what?
‘Mate—’
‘That I couldn’t handle it?’
Fred’s apologetic gaze is the answer. Or maybe not apologetic, maybe there’s an edge of uncertainty there, like he’s questioned the same thing.
‘I told her you could. I said you were an experienced officer and you were all over it.’
My heart ups its pace in my chest and breath quickens. I feel like I’ve been hit with a dump of adrenaline for no particular reason. Perfect timing. Why is it that when there’s nothing wrong with you but someone suspects there is, you start acting in the very way that makes you seem guilty?
‘Was I right, Steve?’
My heart’s thumping so hard I can’t even answer him without giving myself away. Except now it’s more that I’m furious than anything else. How can he even ask me that?
‘Listen. The point is,’ he adds, pulling himself upright, his sergeant’s voice and cool demeanour returning to where it’s supposed to be, ‘you’re not a taxi service or a social worker, much as it sometimes feels like that. Your only reason to speak to someone is if they inform you they’
re in trouble, they’ve reported a crime, they’re committing one, or you suspect they’re about to. Other than that, you stay in your lane and stop me from having to raise concerns about your ability to do the job with them upstairs.’
That rush of hot adrenaline freezes in my veins. It starts from my ribcage and works its way outward, reaching my head last, where it drains the blood from my face. It’s as if everything is shutting down. As if I’m shutting down. Every part of me, so that I might not be able to move from this spot. But just like at the hospital, I find my voice. And when I do, it brings me back to where I am. Where we are. This room. My best mate.
‘You wouldn’t do that,’ I say, remembering the hours I spent helping him revise for his sergeant’s exam, the errors he made over the years that I dealt with to save his skin – little things like misplaced paperwork, forgetting to time and date statements, the punch he landed on a suspect who described in detail what he planned to do to Lisa. That would have been instant suspension if I hadn’t covered for him. If I hadn’t lied for him.
‘We’re friends, for god’s sake, Fred.’
The back of Fred’s hand swipes across his nose and he can barely look at me. In just that action alone, I already know what’s coming.
‘I’m also your commanding officer, PC Fuller,’ he says, his eyes weary when they find mine. ‘With my own duty to abide by.’
My body moves ahead of my thoughts, getting me up from the desk and straightening my posture, snapping my heels together, my palm raising in a salute, fingers touching my temple. Petty maybe, but that’s what you do when you’re dumped on from a great height.
‘Understood, Sergeant Dalston, sir.’
My feet move, taking me out of the office, down the hall, and into the locker room. Calm, ordered, compliant. But the thud of the door once I push it closed behind me, is all I need. My vision, my hearing, the rush of blood in my ears, the faint smell of stale sweat and deodorant in the empty room, the words of our conversation, Smithy’s complaint, Sacha’s doubts, Fred’s arrogance – all rushing at me as clear as daylight, so that the rage it brings simmers under my skin and releases from my chest, bursting through my fist to put a dent into the nearest metal locker. Then another. It’s only after the third, when the nerve endings in my knuckles explode with pain, that I force myself to stop.
Chapter 22
The call comes in as I’m concluding a spat between a landlord and his tenant at a property in Stow Park Crescent. The tenant disputed the right of the property owner to turn up without warning whenever he fancied. The landlord disputed the rights of the occupant to house several unreported guests and a Great Dane, none of which is stipulated as permissible in the tenancy agreement. After much negotiation, Mr Tamblin agreed not to allow his brother to bring Beyoncé the dog around any more, and to seek alternative housing at the end of the contract in two months’ time, while Mr Chopra agreed to provide at least twenty-four hours’ advance notice of his visits. Despite the harmonious resolution, I wait for the proprietor to drive off before I do so myself, for fear of any further reprisals. No further action needed, other than a log of my attendance and the outcome. That won’t be the case on this next call, though. Officer assistance required urgently. Suspect male armed with approximate ten-inch blade outside a factory unit on the Langland Way Industrial Estate.
With blue light, it won’t take me long to get across town even as the evening rush hour picks up. I catch the updates as I drive, of those in attendance and what’s happening on the scene, anything that will help me form a picture of what I’ll be met with when I arrive. There are several officers there already. The suspect is volatile, shouting abuse and unapproachable. It’s not clear what his demands are, but I can make a few guesses. Armed response have been deployed and are on route. But until they get there, the only thing between my colleagues and the blade is an extendable baton and a can of pepper spray.
I pull up behind a bank of other squad cars and register my arrival on scene. In the distance are the black outlines of the officers, and as I run down the road towards them, I absorb as much detail as I can. They stand in a half ring about fifteen feet away from the man who I can hear from here. I don’t catch what he’s saying, but his voice is coming from somewhere deep in the centre of him. He’s backed up to a six-foot metal spiked fence, behind which is the Piece By Piece sewing factory. Faces fill the windows of the office, the best seats for today’s performance. I look to my colleagues, noticing PC John Russell first, his hands up, palms to the suspect, his voice tempered.
Peghead’s here too, right hand behind his back where he holds his baton in his palm, concealed. There are two female officers and another male I recognise from other wards. Their faces are expressionless as they watch the suspect, not taking their eyes off him, but the adrenaline will be pumping through their bodies as much as the man holding centre stage. As much as mine is right now.
I join the semi-circle, careful not to disrupt the calm energy my colleagues are trying to control the situation with. But our suspect – and I don’t need a reminder of his mugshot to identify him as Maxime Boucher – isn’t concerned by a growing audience. He’s too busy for that. He has a point to make. He has something he wants.
‘It’s because you’re not fucking listening. If you’d just fucking listen.’
His voice flies out of him. The knife in his hand is by his side but the fingers gripping it tight have blood on them – his own or someone else’s, it’s not clear. I can’t see from here if he’s cut, because he keeps moving. Side to side. One way then the other. But he wears a khaki long-sleeved top and cargo pants, neither of which are bloody.
‘How many times? I need to talk to her, that’s all. That’s it. For fuck’s sake.’
The blade comes up and there’s a collective bracing from the six of us, but he waves it behind him towards the sewing factory.
‘I only wanted to talk, just for a fucking minute. But you lot, you’ve got to make everything more than it is.’
‘So why bring the knife, mate?’ Russell says, and I’m guessing he was either first on scene or positioned himself as negotiator. ‘You’ll only frighten her with that, won’t you?’
‘Because I know what you’re like. Three years you’ve been yanking on my fucking strings. I knew this would happen. I knew you’d try and stop me. So fucking come on then. Do your worst.’
He thumps his chest with his free hand, taking a step forward and bouncing on the balls of his feet like a boxer warming up for a round. Pumped is the word that comes to mind. Boucher is pumped. Though pumped with what is hard to say, but I’m guessing it’s not a natural high.
‘Come on, pretty boy, you fucking first?’
‘Sorry, fella. Wouldn’t be a fair fight. Not with that thing.’
‘This thing?’ He waves the knife in front of him. ‘I can ditch this thing. But six against one? That wouldn’t be fucking fair either. And I know you lot, you’d need all of you to take me down.’ He points the tip of the blade at Russell, and with a gleam in his dark eyes says, ‘Just you and me. You up for that? I’m up for that. Skinny little runt like you. I’ve been busting up shits like you since you were in nappies. I could take you with one punch.’
‘I’m sure you could, mate. But I don’t want to fight you.’
‘Course you don’t. Course you don’t. ‘Cause you’re a fucking snowflake, right? All you coppers are these days.’
He laughs at his own summation, a high-pitched screech that stabs through my head, the scar above his eyebrow twisting and deepening so that half of his face loses all symmetry. How fitting he should look so much like a pantomime villain. No make-up required.
Behind me, sirens scream as more assistance arrives. Down the other end of the street, a van and several officers prevent anyone coming this way. But how long before armed response get here, because whatever is fuelling Boucher could last for hours yet. And much as I trust Russell as a cop, I’m not sure even he can sweet talk his way out of thi
s one – Boucher is cornered and his freedom threatened once again, he’ll lash out to protect it. He’s desperate. And desperate means he could do anything, he has nothing to lose. Is there anything more dangerous than someone with nothing left to lose?
‘Mate, we’re not getting anywhere like this,’ Russell says, taking a step into the ring we’ve formed. ‘Tell me what it is you want? What do you need?’
Sunlight flashes off the knife as it comes up to point at Russell. It blinds me, so I can only make out half of the man in front of me. I glance around at my colleagues – there’s only half of them too. A sudden laugh cracks, another screech. It clenches my insides in a grip as firm and lethal as the blade being waved in the air only metres away from me.
‘Shall I tell you what I fucking need?’ Boucher spits out. ‘I need you to back the fuck off and stop calling me mate. Mate.’
‘Alright. Got it.’
Russell obliges. He looks remarkably calm for a man with a knife pointed at him by a drugged-up psycho and only a baton on his belt and a can of CS spray in his pocket. Next to him, Peghead is still, but his features more concentrated, his eyes unblinking and fixed ahead, ready to move at the slightest provocation, his hand behind his back in which I know his fingers will be clenching that baton tight. A thin sheen of sweat glistens across his forehead in the late afternoon sun, the only clue to his distress. Will he be hoping that baton’s enough if he has to use it? Will he be hoping, like I am, that armed response gets here sooner rather than later?
‘What else, Maxime?’ Russell is saying. ‘What else do you need?’