by TL Dyer
The beer and the coffee do little to ease my restlessness and I go upstairs before Ange gets back, lock myself in the bathroom, and turn on the shower. Stripping from the joggers and t-shirt Ange brought to the hospital, I sit on the edge of the bathtub, scrolling through the contacts and hovering over Tricia’s name. I don’t know what I want to say, or what I expect her to reply, so I read our messages from a few nights ago until the phone vibrates in my hand.
It’s Fred again, telling me I’m wiped from the rota for a few shifts and my next one’s not till the seventh of May. That’ll be over a week rattling around this place. Call it paranoia, but something tells me the time off is about more than my superficial head wound. I throw the phone aside, strip off my underwear and step into the shower, ducking under just enough to get my face wet, but not the stitches above my neckline.
As I close my eyes, the warm water cascades over my closed lids and down my neck, both soothing me and bringing back another of those images I’ll never forget much as I’ll try. This one is of Boucher, bright red blood sliding down the skin and stubble on his throat. Russell launching forward, and everyone else taking no time at all to react. No thought, no consideration, no tactical plan. Just an officer in movement. Like a row of dominoes, one nudge and we all go together.
I touch my fingers to my head, the shaved patch not quite to the skull but not far off. A drop of water seeps into the wound and I wince first at the sting, then at my touch, the skin still raw where it was parted and stitched back together again, numbed so I wouldn’t feel the needle. I almost told the nurse there was a good chance I wouldn’t feel it anyway, the way I’ve been lately, but I didn’t. Too many questions would have followed, ones I’ve got no logical answers for. I’d already lied about the sores on the knuckles of my right hand, inflicted when I thumped the locker door, but for which the Boucher incident gave me a convenient cover-up.
‘A clean slice,’ the doctor called the wound.
‘Rad,’ Dan called it, with an approving nod and the closest thing I’d seen to a genuine smile in months.
‘Could have been your fucking neck,’ Ange called it, fingers gripping the bed rail, lips thin, like this was all my fault.
*
I spend the afternoon scouring the TV news channels and websites for updates on Boucher, but it’s all the same. Re-packaged and rerun, but in the end, the same thing. He’s back in custody and due before the magistrate in the morning charged with the new offences. The images of him are old mugshots and the footage is of an empty scene, no police presence now, all traces of blood cleaned, nothing of yesterday’s drama, just an industrial estate full of workers doing what they do to get paid to put food on the table. Eye witnesses are keen to big up the action and to languish in their shock and horror, even while it’s closer to excitement that gleams in their eyes and tugs their lips into guilty smiles. ‘Stuff like that never happens round here,’ they say.
‘Actually, it does,’ I mutter to the TV. ‘More than you think.’
In essence, Boucher was just another domestic. A man angry because the woman he wants doesn’t want him. And the woman he wants doesn’t want him because he’s an angry man. Welcome to the domestic violence merry-go-round. Possessiveness and obsession disguised as love. Something ugly parading as something special. I snatch up the remote, try a different channel.
Ange is back from the shops and busy about the house. Doing what I don’t know, but she’s making hard work of it. Everything bangs, the floorboards creak, now and then the hoover hums, its brush tapping against the skirting boards. I settle on the BBC 24-hour News and turn the volume up.
Dan gets home sometime around four, coming into the sitting room with his coat still on and bag over his shoulder to get another look at my stitches. With my back to him, I hear the click of the camera shutter on his phone and think about telling him off, but how long has it been since he’s paid me this much notice, and that’s the first photo of me he’s ever taken. For now, I suck it up. I think we might be bonding.
Ange comes downstairs and Dan retreats to his room. I offer to make dinner but she insists she wants to do it, says she’d rather do that than sit around doing nothing. But she makes so much noise in the kitchen, I have to wonder at her sincerity.
The three of us just sit down to eat when someone’s ringing the doorbell. Ange scrapes her chair back to see who it is and returns a moment later, muttering, ‘It’s one of your lot.’
The one of my lot is Jonesy. He’s returned my car and parked it out front. Over the road, his wife waits in their Fiesta. I wave and she does the same, beaming a smile I see even from this distance away. Jonesy hands me my keys he took from my locker. He’s changed out of uniform and into denims and a hoody, which makes him look far too young to be doing half the stuff expected of him as a copper. He’s only a nipper. It seems strange that I was no older than him when I started, but I can’t remember ever thinking I didn’t belong, or that I couldn’t do it, even before I knew exactly what it would entail – the job, the bits of it my father failed to mention. Was I a cocky little shit from the start? Was I so blinded by my father’s interpretation of what it meant to be a copper that I assumed I already knew everything? What an insufferable prick I must have been. Jonesy couldn’t be further from insufferable if he tried.
‘Shit a brick,’ he says, when he asks to see my stitches and I show him. Horror is plastered all over his face in that way he hasn’t yet learned to mask with humour. ‘I’d have fucking crapped myself.’
‘No, you wouldn’t have. Your instincts would have kicked in. Everything you’ve been taught. You’d have done your job.’
He doesn’t look convinced, but says, ‘I hope so.’
I want to put a hand on his shoulder, tell him he’s got this. Tell him he’s a good copper, probie or not. But even Jonesy would call me soft for that. So instead I say, ‘Anyway, it’s only a scratch. I’d have been at work tomorrow, only they won’t let me.’
‘No, Steve, you should rest. I mean...’ He scratches the back of his head. ‘I mean, that’s fucking scary.’
‘Well, John-boy had it all under control. He was immense.’
Jonesy smiles, and a gleam comes into his eye that I recognise for what it is. Respect for his peers. ‘Hasn’t shut up about it either, the dickhead,’ he says, with a laugh.
‘He was on shift today?’
‘Wasn’t he just. I was stuck in a unit with him.’
‘You poor sod. Hope he’s not still walking round like Tarzan.’
‘Tarzan?’
‘Never mind.’
‘Oh, you mean this.’ Jonesy reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his phone. When he finds what he’s after, he flips the screen. It’s a picture of John from yesterday, minus the polo shirt, his utility vest pulled either side of his nipples and pinned in place by his folded arms. It’s difficult to see if the blood still streaks his forehead, because he wears his copper’s lid and his head is dipped so that he peers up from under it. Next to him, written over the photo, in the space which I recognise as the locker room at the station, someone has scrawled, ‘SEWP’s Mr June 2019’, and drawn a love heart with an arrow piercing it.
‘So reassuring to see how worried my colleagues were about me,’ I say, passing the phone back to Jonesy.
Russell can most definitely be an insufferable prick, but after yesterday I think I can put up with him. Sometimes it takes someone like him – fewer brains, more guts, pure instinct and action – to get a job done with the best outcome.
‘It’s funny you should say he was immense though,’ Jonesy says, eyeing me in that way the younger cops view those with more years on the job, as if time alone makes us something special. ‘He said the same thing about you. Said it was pure guts how you took the hit and still didn’t let go of Boucher, got him down.’
‘No, not me,’ I say, looking over his shoulder to where his wife is waiting, her gaze on her lap, where her phone is, I imagine. ‘I didn’t even know he’
d cut me. It was John and Peghead did the hard work. Some others from the Pill ward.’
‘Yeah, alright, Steve, if you say so.’
‘Anyway, look. Don’t let me keep you from getting off home. The day’s long enough.’ I hold up my palm, which Jonesy clasps with a firmer grip than I expect from him. ‘Cheers for bringing the car back, fella. I appreciate it. Saves me the trip tomorrow. Don’t suppose you gave her a soap and vac too while you were there?’
‘Like fuck. Nice wheels, though. Rest easy, Steve.’ He flicks a thumbs up as he retreats down the path, and I respond with a wink.
‘Will do, mate. Stay safe.’
I watch them leave, the two of them waving as they go, the brake lights coming on at the junction to the estate, and then they’re gone. He’s a good kid. I hope that this job works out for him. That his sensitive nature doesn’t hinder his progress and that he sticks with it. Because if he does, it’ll make him an even better man than he is now. I wonder what kind of man it made me, if it made me anything at all. I’d always assumed it had, that it stood for something admirable, that the job title alone meant someone strong and capable. These days I’m not so sure. And that scares me to death.
I stare down the empty street long after the car engine has faded into the distance, and sense an emptiness in my chest that I didn’t say those things that were right there in my mouth. Soft or not, maybe they’d have done the boy good, helped him grow that hard shell he needs. Maybe they’d have helped me if they’d been said to me. The most I got from the old man the day I passed out as an officer was, ‘Don’t think the learning stops now, son. This is just the start.’ Mum had smiled, her hand on my arm – a silent apology, I’d thought then, for my father’s disaffected words. Now I know what the sympathy was really for. He was sodding right.
‘Steve. Your food’s getting cold.’
At the sound of Ange’s voice behind me, I step back inside and close the door.
Chapter 24
Doctor Adrian Lee Simons pulls into the Usk campus car park in a midnight blue Mustang convertible with the top down, sunlight glinting off his aviator shades. Students arriving for their morning lectures smile and wave, the boys watching the car, the girls distracted by its driver. He nods in response, turning into a space just opposite where I’m parked, and the Mustang’s roof unfolds, stretching over itself to seal him inside.
For the past four days, once Ange has left for work and Dan for school, I’ve driven out this way. But this is the first time I’ve had actual eyes on him. And he’s everything I expect. Until he steps out of the car.
Brown brogues with denim jeans, into the waistband of which his shirt is tucked, and a thin beige blazer jacket over the top, tells me he’s not what they call a man of fashion. So apart from the crisis on wheels, all he’s got going for him is an accent from over the pond that gives him an air of someone different, someone not from round here, and therefore someone mildly intriguing.
The denims ride up over black socks as he reaches into the back of the Mustang and pulls out a battered soft leather briefcase he tucks under his arm, then dives in again for a stack of cardboard folders. He bumps the door shut with his hip, locks the car, hesitates at the rear, peers closer, tilting his head, then moves away with his eyes still on the boot as if he’s reluctant to leave it. It’ll be his pride and joy. The thing he wanted all his life, until one day the saving and the dreaming was over, and now he spends the entire time he’s not in it worrying about it.
I think about having a word, but there are too many people around and he’s in a hurry. I don’t want him to have any excuses to get away when we meet face to face. The wind catches his hair so it flaps up and down on his forehead like a wayward sail on a stormy sea. I imagine he uses hair products to achieve such an effect, and wonder if he has his favourite brand of moisturiser shipped over from the States, too.
He strides the last ten yards to the front doors with a student in tow, a female with hair as long and as dark as Anna’s. She looks at him a lot as she speaks, hands doing most of the talking for her, and a smile split so wide he must wish he’d kept the shades on. She holds the door open for him. He glances at her, to thank her maybe, and she scurries in after him, the door banging shut behind them. I look back to the Mustang.
He’s doing alright for himself for a man who wears brogues with jeans and whose image is a cross reference of ‘90s cool and ‘80s geography teacher. Two lads are taking the chance, while the owner’s not around, to cup their hands to the windows and peer in. Another stands at the back of it with his head to one side, feet planted and hips tilted like he’s considering how best to mount it.
‘Jesus,’ I mutter to the dry air inside the car. ‘See it for what it is, boys. A mid-life crisis on wheels.’
Was that what Anna was too? A vulnerable young woman dragged into his crisis? Someone young and pretty on his arm, in his bed, to prove he still could.
I punch the button on the door to bring down the window and let in some air, the sound of which draws the boys’ attention, and as if caught doing something they shouldn’t, they straighten and walk on towards the college without looking back. Shame. If ever I’d wanted to witness someone put an elbow to a side window, knock out the ignition barrel or rip out the wiring, it was now. But they had too much respect for the car, and maybe its owner, to do that.
Sunlight rebounds off the rear lights, blinding me. I press my fingers to my eyes, but when I open them again the sun spots are still there. I glance left to the college building. Windows everywhere, but all I see in them are shifting clouds in an otherwise clear blue sky.
The car park’s quiet now, empty of students, everyone called inside to their lectures, and the Mustang just sitting there, alone and conspicuous. Gleaming bodywork and spotless alloys. It makes me wonder if Simons is one of those trusting types. Or if he’s newer to this country than I assumed he was.
*
I make dinner that night. Something simple that Ange and I eat at the breakfast bar and Dan asks if he can take to his room. I tell him, ‘Yes, mate, no problem.’ Ange had been about to say no, but Dan’s gone before the counterargument is raised.
‘You out tonight?’ I ask, between mouthfuls of chicken curry and rice.
‘Why, you want to do something?’
I glance up, but it’s the food she’s looking at, not me. Over her shoulder, the clock has it at almost seven. I’ll need to be out of here in half an hour.
‘Sorry, love, I can’t. Said I’d have a few beers with someone from work.’
‘Right.’ She pokes at the curry with the fork, shifting it around the plate.
‘Is it alright?’
‘Yes, it’s lovely. Thanks.’ Her eyes flick up to mine and away again, quick enough to tell me there’s something up.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. I put down the fork, then catch myself and instead pick up the glass of water and take a sip.
‘Need a lift?’ she asks.
‘Nah, you’re alright. I’ll drive. Just have the one.’
She nods, pokes some more at the food. I glance again to the clock. If I get a move on, I’ll fit in a shower and shave.
‘Actually, Steve, I spoke to the estate agents today.’
‘Yeah?’
‘They’re hopeful of a quick sale of the Lobster.’
‘Well they would say that, wouldn’t they?’ The last of the curry is thick in my throat and I reach for the water, down it in one. ‘They won’t say it’ll be on the market for months and we’ll be paying them a small fortune in commission for the privilege.’
She pushes the plate away, half the food left. ‘But I was thinking. Seeing as the cottage will sell regardless, why don’t we use the savings to put the deposit down on the finca in the meantime?’
I’m glad I’ve finished eating, else I might have choked.
‘Absolutely not,’ I say, trying to judge if she’s serious.
‘But it makes sense.’
‘No, it doesn�
��t. And when you say the savings, you mean mine, right?’ The nice little nest egg from Mum and Dad’s inheritance, accruing some welcome interest, plus the extras I’ve added over the years. I hadn’t decided yet what I’d use it for, but it wasn’t for some crumbling shack in the Costa Del Bolthole, that’s for sure.
‘Well of course it’s yours, Steve. And you’ll get it back. It just means we won’t lose out on the finca while we’re waiting.’
The finca. The finca. The fucking finca.
‘Look, if the finca’s gone by the time we sell the Lobster, then it was meant to be,’ I say, calming it down, reminding myself I need to be out of here soon. But seems this isn’t the answer she was looking for.
‘So you’re getting all fatalistic on me now?’
‘Whatever, Ange.’ I get up from the stool and reach for her plate. ‘You done?’
She takes a moment to respond, green eyes searching mine for something she’ll be hard pushed to find. I won’t just roll over every time she wants me to. Not over this anyway.
‘Yeah, I’m done.’ She gets up, slamming the kitchen door behind her when she leaves.
I scrape her leftovers into the dog’s bowl, about the only thing that still gets Rumpole out of his bed and trotting from one end of the room to the other. And as I slip the plates into the tepid soapy water in the sink, I think about asking Tricia tonight if she knows anything about Simons.
Chapter 25
Fifty-eight-year-old Margaret, Mags to her friends, my Salsa partner for this week, saw the funny side the first time the sole of my shoe got too friendly with her lemon pumps. But after the second, and now third slip up, she’s looking a little tired of it. My ex-partner, meanwhile, is having no such problems. She’s in the more capable arms of the new guy.
The new guy – who I can’t help feeling a twinge of envy at – is eighty-two-year-old Albert ‘The Lightning’ Robinson. Not quite as lightning as in his younger years perhaps, but more deft of foot than I am at less than half his age. The boy’s still got it. One-time Wales and UK Salsa and ballroom champion, The Lightning shimmies his hips in a way that makes us lesser males in the group feel about as inferior as a week-old limp lettuce next to an Iceberg crispy leaf. But though Tricia is revelling in having someone in the class who knows what he’s doing for once, and has clearly fallen for Albert’s hip-slinging charms, my instinct is telling me that something about her isn’t right.