The six-man squad, in bulky body armour and bristling with tech, debussed with smooth precision and came pounding across the tarmac towards them.
‘Thanks,’ the boy said, more quietly now, as the whine of the rotors died away.
‘What for?’ Olivia said, stung by his obvious relief. ‘You’re still under arrest, you know.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, sullen, jerking his head towards the men now surrounding them, ‘but if you’d left me to that lot, I’d be dead.’
Detective (Grade 1) Damien Wheeler checked out his reflection in the mirrored back wall of the lift as it clanked its way down from the fourth floor and was thoroughly satisfied by what he saw. He smoothed down his tie and made sure that, when he thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, his jacket opened just far enough to reveal the shoulder holster underneath. Pity that all it held was a Taser.
It was one of Wheeler’s great regrets that he’d come into the service too late to be allowed a real gun. The prospect of carrying had been one of the attractions of applying for police training college in the first place. But, by the time he’d qualified, public disquiet over the number of civilian casualties had grown into uproar, and the brief experiment of wholesale arming of the British police was over.
Anyway, there was no police training college anymore. Just a boot camp for the front-line bobbies—cannon fodder most of them, who would have been squaddies if there was still a defence budget. That and university degrees for the wannabe detectives.
Despite his comparative youth—only just turned thirty—Wheeler thought of himself as last of the old school. A real policeman. Came up the hard way and proud of it. He’d made it to Detective Sergeant before the reorganisation, when they’d got rid of the old system of ranks. Somehow, DG1 didn’t have the same ring to it at all.
He ducked his head, like a boxer, and practised his ice-cool cop stare. He was pleased with that look. It suited him. Went with the square jaw and cobalt-blue eyes. He just hoped it would have more effect on the new girl than the waste-of-time trainee he’d ended up with. It had taken three days of being at his most charming before he discovered she was a lesbian. Bitch. He bet that was why the lieutenant had foisted her off on to him in the first place.
He still couldn’t get used to calling former Detective Inspector Job ‘Lieutenant’—just too damn American for his taste. Still, if Job couldn’t be bothered to go down to reception to meet the new girl in person, why shouldn’t Wheeler have a crack at her?
And at least it showed that even the mighty Lieutenant Job could throw his toys out of his pram occasionally. Wheeler had been secretly pleased when Job’s trainee hadn’t arrived dead on 09:00. By 10:30 he was struggling to contain his glee—hadn’t been able to resist a quick dig.
‘I’m sure Ms Milton will provide a perfectly reasonable explanation,’ was all Job had said, but Wheeler was sure he was seething, underneath. He must have been. After all, the old man outranked him. He’d had first pick and Olivia Milton was his choice, and she’d screwed up on her first day.
And then the call had come in. Bloody Milton had not only managed to foil an armed robbery on her way in, but had disarmed and arrested the perpetrator, single-handed. Unbelievable. The captain had already been up to congratulate Job, like the lieutenant had anything to do with it. The bastard always came up smelling of roses.
The lift finally wheezed to a stop at ground-floor level and let out a half-hearted bing-bong as the doors lurched open. Wheeler stepped out, running a hand over his styled blond hair. He pushed through the doors to the reception area to find a couple of gorillas from English Custodial Services plc were just signing for the new prisoner.
The Milton girl was standing facing away from the door, but even from that angle what he saw made Wheeler suck in his six-pack a little more, and set a predatory gleam in his eye.
She was tall, with long red hair tied at the nape of her neck by a velvet ribbon. From the back, her figure was classic hourglass, emphasised by the long skirt she wore, which flared out from a narrow waist. Now, that was more like it.
Wheeler sauntered over.
‘Miss Milton, is it?’ he asked casually. ‘Or should I say, newly minted Detective (Grade 3) Milton?’
The girl turned, nodded, and he found his eyes naturally drawn to the slightly bulging third button of her cream blouse. After a second he caught himself enough to thrust out a hand.
‘Damien Wheeler—DG1 Wheeler, to be precise,’ he said, giving her his best smooth smile and manly handshake. It was slightly disconcerting to come across a woman whose eyes were on a level with his own. Hers were hazel where he’d been hoping for green, but you couldn’t have everything. ‘Lieutenant Job asked me to take you up to the office, show you the ropes. If you’re all done?’
The wary look on the girl’s face lifted. ‘Oh, yes. Fine.’
She flashed a quick smile to the ECS guys, who lit up like all their Christmases had come at once. To Wheeler’s surprise, the smile also extended to the junkie trash she’d just brought in. ‘This is where I leave you,’ she told him. ‘Mike and Tony here will sort you out with the details of the rehab centre. When your solicitor arrives, she should be able to arrange a deal if you agree to enter the programme voluntarily.’
The kid smiled back at her, grateful and more than a touch adoring. Wheeler hastily led her away, hurrying to open the door out of reception for her. A bit of old-world gallantry always went down well.
She moved through ahead of him and made straight for the stairs, ignoring the waiting lift. He had no option but to follow her lead.
‘Bit of exercise—good idea,’ he said, hearty, trying to make the best of it. ‘Thought you might have had enough of that for one day, eh?’
She didn’t respond, and he saved his breath until they were on the second floor landing.
‘You’re quite something, you know,’ he said then, pausing to treat her to his coolly assessing stare. The one that had them melting in his hand. ‘Bringing that kid in by yourself takes some guts. Not to mention getting on first-name terms with the boys from ECS so fast. Piece of advice for you though, Olivia—it is Olivia, isn’t it?’
She nodded, frowning. Sweet, really.
‘Don’t try to mother all the lame ducks you bring in. Caring is the last thing you need to do, or you’ll burn out inside five years.’ He looked her up and down. ‘Not that you’ll be here that long.’
She bridled at that. ‘Are you implying I’m not serious about my career?’
He flashed her another smile, his amusement genuine.
‘Not at all, babe. Quite the opposite, in fact. Bright girl like you? I think you’ll be here twelve months, tops. Get some experience at the sharp end. Then you’ll have had enough of slumming it with us at State and you’ll jump ship to the Privvies, just like all the rest.’
The girl looked about to speak, but remained silent. Confirmation if ever he heard it. You could always spot the ambitious ones. Still, no reason not to make hay while the sun shone. He moved closer, touched her arm.
‘Hey, don’t sweat it. Not everybody has what it takes to stick with a pretty thankless job—underfunded, understaffed—when they could be swanning around as a company cop with all the latest investigative toys to play with, and their own armed backup squad on call twenty-four/seven.’
‘If you think it’s so great with the private force, why are you still here?’ she demanded.
He straightened his jacket, shot a cuff. ‘Not everyone can afford to be a shareholder and pay for their justice,’ he said, aiming for quiet dignity and not quite hitting it. ‘State—it’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.’
In other words, Olivia considered, you aren’t good enough to be taken on by the private sector.
She pegged the type as soon as she laid eyes on Wheeler. It was a relief when he introduced himself and she realised he wasn’t th
e one she’d be working for directly. Olivia hoped she hadn’t made her reaction too obvious, but good God, the man was an octopus in rank aftershave and a cheap tan suit.
Okay, he was good-looking, in a way, but something slightly artificial stopped him short of being actually attractive. The upside-down-triangle physique was impressive enough, but by the time they’d climbed to the fourth floor, he was breathless. All show and no go.
Still, her course tutors had warned her she might face resentment from those State coppers who didn’t have the ability or the drive to make the switch. Olivia supposed that even this smarmy approach was better than outright hostility.
And besides, he’d been almost spot-on in his assessment. She’d been planning on a year—two at the most—to add some extra shine to her degree, then looking for an opportunity with all the perks he’d mentioned. Who wouldn’t?
Wheeler led her into the untidy, open-plan office and introduced her to his own trainee, a demure-looking Asian girl. The girl gave her a sympathetic smile and, as soon as Wheeler’s back was turned, rolled her eyes and made a fast hand gesture that confirmed Olivia’s initial impression.
Even the captain put in an appearance. Boydell was a short, stubby little Welshman, with fat-fingered hands and a rounded face. He also had the most penetrating gaze Olivia had ever come across. She could still remember it boring into her during the preliminary interview. Trying to get inside her skull and probably unravelling her motives all too successfully.
Captain Boydell shook her hand vigorously, welcomed her to the team, and left with a cheerful throwaway remark that she should be ready to give interviews to the press at 15:30.
‘Interviews, sir?’ she repeated faintly
Boydell paused in the doorway. ‘You’re quite the heroine of the hour, Detective Milton. You don’t think I’m going to pass up a golden PR opportunity like this when it’s dropped in my lap, do you?’
Olivia watched him leave with the first stirrings of apprehension. An inkling that maybe her best course of action this morning might have been to stay in her car.
What, and let that TRU sniper shoot the kid? It might have been her conscience talking.
‘Well, Ms Milton, you’ve certainly made quite an impression on your first day,’ said a measured voice behind her.
She turned to find a sombre man regarding her without the faintest trace of approval, no discernible inflection in his voice. Distantly, she heard Wheeler introducing Lieutenant Job, and her heart sank a little farther.
‘Yes, sir.’
Job continued his brooding stare for a moment longer. He was old—fifty at least—and what hair he had was clipped short and grey. Who stayed balding these days when they no longer needed to? Suddenly, even Wheeler’s obvious charms began to seem preferable.
‘Do you mean “yes, sir” that was your original intention, or “yes, sir” that was merely an added bonus?’
Olivia opened her mouth, then shut it again and glared at him. He was playing word games with her. Whichever option she chose, she was damned.
‘Well, sir,’ she said at last, sweetly. ‘I thought I’d start as I meant to go on.’
‘Hm.’ Job’s expression didn’t alter, she was sure of that, but something flickered in his stone-grey eyes. ‘That’s what I was afraid of.’
He glanced at Wheeler, who’d been lounging on the corner of a desk. ‘If you wouldn’t mind taking Ms Milton to collect her equipment.’ It was assembled as a question, delivered as an order.
Wheeler straightened at once. ‘My pleasure, boss.’
His manner didn’t soften any when he was dealing with any of his underlings, Olivia noted with slight relief that didn’t last.
‘And after that, Ms Milton, I’ll see you in the review suite,’ he said. ‘Then you can give me a full account of your actions this morning.’
As he moved away Wheeler’s voice murmured in her ear. ‘Cheer up, babe. People hardly ever die during interrogation any more…’
‘Again, Ms Milton,’ Job ordered. ‘Take me through it again, from the beginning, and don’t leave anything out.’
‘I’ve already told you,’ Olivia said wearily. She’d done well in the Interview and Interrogation module of the course, but having a good theoretical knowledge of the techniques being used against her was, she discovered, little defence.
‘Well, tell me again.’
Job sat back in the moulded plastic chair on the other side of the scuffed 3D projector grid and took a sip of his coffee. Olivia’s own cup stood untouched by her elbow, cold now, the recyclable cup starting to go soggy at the base.
Apart from the deactivated table-top grid, four chairs, and the standard recorder, the room was bare. Grubby and unforgiving. Above Job, the diodes in two of the cheap LED spotlights were burning out. Their flickering threw his face into sinister, unforgiving shadow.
Doggedly, she went back over her story, forcing herself to stick rigidly to the facts, not to add inconsequential details. Occasionally, Job scribbled one-word notes on paper rather than directly into his tablet. He used a pen—a real ink pen—and who used those anymore? Olivia couldn’t read his writing.
‘So,’ he said when she’d petered out, ‘what have you learned from this, Ms Milton?’
‘Learned, sir?’
‘If you were put into exactly the same situation tomorrow morning, what would you do?’
‘Probably the same again,’ she said without hesitation.
‘Hm, would you, indeed?’
He did pick up his tablet then, dabbed the screen to fire up the projector. It was an old unit, the cooling fans squeaking, and when the holographic image appeared on the grid between them, it flickered as badly as the lights.
The Privvies had whole rooms given over to reconstruction and review, Olivia knew, not just this crappy miniaturised display. There, you could move among life-size figures rendered from footage from the security drones that buzzed constantly overhead. It brought new meaning to the words ‘caught in the act.’
The pictures from the toll plaza were incomplete in the camera blind spots and these processors weren’t adequate to supply the missing pixels. Still, she could recognise the scene easily enough. The time display showed it was moments before the boy—she now knew his name was Trevor—approached the cashier.
Job let it run until the gun came into view, then froze the image, which shivered as though an earthquake had struck. He nodded to the time marker.
‘08:59,’ he said in that cold, clear voice she was coming to dislike. ‘The drones’ recognition software has just alerted the Tactical Response Unit. The cashier has worked for the company for five years. She’s fully trained and knows that all she has to do is keep her head down for eleven minutes, maximum, and it will all be over. Clear so far?’
‘Yes, sir.’
He glanced at her, his expression unreadable. At some point, she noted, his nose had been broken. Not badly, just enough to slightly thicken the bridge.
He thumbed the tablet and they watched events unfold in silence. Another few minutes crawled past while Trevor hammered and threatened at the booth window. Then another figure appeared—her own.
Olivia shifted in her seat, trying not to squirm. It was plain even to her own eyes that she had been terrified, her body movements jerkily stiff. It was embarrassingly obvious, too, that she was clumsily trying to hide something in her right hand. In her left she held out the money, as if trying to coax a wily horse with lumps of sugar.
Job froze the image again, just, it seemed to Olivia, when she was at her most ungainly. ‘What were you thinking at this point, Ms Milton?’
Olivia shrugged. ‘I don’t know…that I needed to stop him before he injured the cashier, I suppose. Why, what should I have been thinking?’
The last bit came out snappier than she had intended, if his brief stillness was anything
to go by.
‘Any number of questions spring to mind. Where did the boy come from? You’ve said you didn’t see him actually arrive. So, did he walk? Get out of a car? Off the back of a motorcycle? The vital question is, is he alone, or does he have accomplices who may be armed, also?’
He tapped a finger as if on the head of her 3D image and she flinched, like he’d just stuck a pin into a voodoo doll.
‘At this point you are fixated on your one main target, Ms Milton. You are blind to your surroundings and have completely disregarded any other possible sources of danger—to yourself or the public.’
The tableau moved on again, while her blush scaled her cheeks and neck. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d been wrong…
He didn’t comment through her brief exchange with Trevor, and the boy’s grab for the money. Olivia watched herself bring the Taser up, holding the weapon out in front of her as if she was afraid of it. Afraid of what it might do. Pathetic, really.
At the time she’d been so certain that the boy had aimed his gun at her, that he’d been about to pull the trigger. Now she saw that he’d been trying to surrender it.
And she’d shot him anyway.
Job stopped the replay again. The projector juddered in protest. ‘If one of the legal scavengers decides to take this on, you may face charges for excessive force. Just as, before the firearm ban, you’d now be held on a manslaughter charge at the very least.’ He leaned closer, studying the weapon in her hand. ‘That’s a nice piece, but carry the standard-issue Taser in future.’
‘I’m told they’re not as good. Less range and power.’
‘That might be so, but they are also instantly recognisable, and impossible to mistake for anything else.’
‘I see,’ she murmured, but her voice must have told him that she didn’t.
He sighed. ‘You have a lot to learn, Ms Milton, but you have a great deal of potential, and if you’re prepared to stay for long enough, I can train you. But it’s not something you can pick up in six months or a year, and then move on. Not if you truly want to fulfill all that promise.’
Ten Year Stretch Page 24