With Courage With Fear

by AD Davies

  “Us, Bill?” she said. “The other men up there? Or other killers?”

  “No,” he replied without an ounce of fear, no tremble, no frown. “I mean those of us with the courage to beat the fear that society insists we live under. My people. The truly courageous.”

  Then Bill thrust the pen up his nose point-first.

  Alicia yelled, “No!”

  Kuno screamed.

  Murphy and Stevenson charged, but it was too late.

  Philosopher Bill pitched forward like a felled tree and planted head-first into the floor, ramming the metal pen back into his own brain.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  So “Backfill Bobby”, or “DS Stevenson” as Murphy would have to call him, officially took over from Alicia Friend at eight p.m. on Friday evening. She, Stevenson, and Murphy were interviewed at length by representatives from the Independent Police Complaints Commission, hastily arranged by Chief Superintendent Nixon as soon as the news filtered up the chain. It was standard procedure for a death in custody, and although Murphy tried hard to convince himself there was no fault on his part, or that of the officers involved, it did not make it easier to digest.

  The armed officer, whose name he never learned, was also interviewed, as were Kuno Kae and the custody sergeant, but Kuno was still yelling at Daniel Nixon and Janine Paulson, who would not comment on the incident until the IPCC concluded its inquiry. No apology, no promises.

  Standard practice.

  No one was suspended yet, but the investigation had now passed to the Counter Terrorism Command, who were liaising with Nick Shepherd’s OU12 to determine the potential threat. The CTC would now consult with both Nigel Swank and a delegation of parents as to whether to axe the prom. They still hadn’t located the insider. If indeed the insider existed.

  Alicia used the network to transfer all her files, open caseload, and a number of amusing cat pictures to Stevenson’s personal folders, where he would review them once the Philosopher Bill business concluded. Murphy observed it and signed off on the official paperwork, acknowledging the transfer of responsibility and welcoming Stevenson into the position full time. Paulson would obviously look it all over shortly, so Murphy read everything three times. If the SCA still existed by the time Alicia returned to work, he held no doubt Paulson would pursue her complaint against Alicia.

  To be fair, if it was one of his own detectives, Murphy would have chewed them out in the most severe way. If that detective was already on a warning for defying earlier orders, he was certain he’d go the same route as Paulson, and make it an official disciplinary matter. But Alicia wasn’t one of Murphy’s detectives. Sure, he outranked her and was technically her boss on this case, but he still viewed her as an outsider to his department. An advisor.

  Alicia Friend, his friend.

  So he wouldn’t risk a paperwork error adding to Alicia’s woes.

  As she was finishing up with the transfer, DS Cleaver showed up with Sergeant Ball—still in his uniform—and the pair presented Alicia with a gift basket brimming with soaps, bubble bath, and some stinking perfumed fizz-bomb things that nobody really liked but looked great as presents. Alicia allowed her face to brighten—that thousand-watt smile, wide eyes, bobbing hair—but Murphy sensed an air of deception, of despondency. She forced the smile, forced the perky “for me!?!” and as she hugged both men in turn, Murphy caught the smile dimming, if only for a second each time.

  “Ndlove had to get home for childcare,” Cleaver said, “but she chose the present. We weren’t sure. Chose something so you could pamper yourself.”

  “These leaving presents are always aimed at the babies,” Ball added, pointing at the basket. “This one’s for you.”

  “I love it,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “What’d Murphy get you?” Ball asked, hands shifting to his pockets.

  “I don’t know. It’s a surprise.”

  Murphy thanked her with a nod. He hadn’t bought her anything yet, but he expected to see her outside of work anyway. He planned on taking her shopping for a buggy or stroller. Maybe a car seat. Something she could pick out herself so he’d be certain she both liked it and could use it practically. A bit dull, but more use than a slew of fizzy gloop in the bottom of her bath.

  “So.”

  She stood before everyone. Stevenson shuffled from foot-to-foot, more than likely eager to get home.

  “Speech,” Ball said.

  She looked down. Swallowed. Murphy couldn’t help but see the shadow she held over her since the first case they worked together. It took a toll, one she would have to live with for the rest of her life, one that would come back to haunt her whenever she and her child saw a father with his kids, when the kid wanted to know the truth, and she would face the decision of whether to lie. She would not lie, of course, and it was those future events that, when discussed vaguely or in detail, that caused her eyes to glass over and focus on something in the distance.

  Sometimes, Murphy thought this brooding character who leeched through occasionally, might be closer to Alicia’s “true self” than the perky bounce-machine that ordered everyone to “smile” way too often. Her theory, as she espoused, was that if you smile, even when down in the dumps, your spirits lift, and eventually the forced smile becomes real. But this week was one of the toughest of Murphy’s career: twenty seven dead on a motorway, a quadruple shooting, a machete attack, and then the bodies of three still-unnamed children recovered from the garden of a rotting but alive paedophile.

  Not many like this one.

  “Stevenson,” Alicia said, then immediately corrected herself. “Bobby-boy. One thing to finalise on the IROMOV business.”

  “What, no big speech?” Stevenson said. “You’re so fond of them.”

  “No one wants to hear my speech. But that Nick guy and the Counter Terrorism people … you know they need to hear what Bill said at the end, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Murphy said, “Yeah, we all heard it.”

  “The ‘we’,” Alicia said for the benefit of Cleaver. “He spoke about ‘we’ at the end, but only himself in the interview. I don’t know if he slipped up or if he wanted to instil more fear in us as his final act. But they need to know.”

  “I’ll tell them,” Stevenson said. “In the meantime, I’ll … keep your seat warm.”

  “And I’ll wait for my invite to your wedding.”

  “It’s a child-free event.”

  “I can probably find a babysitter.”

  Alicia forced another smile, but it quickly crumbled into a sob. Murphy placed his arm around her, but she fobbed him off.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m just … I’m going to miss this place.”

  “Damn,” Ball said. “And I came all this way for a speech. Don’t you like my new uniform?”

  “It’s lovely.” Alicia wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands, a small laugh escaping. Genuine this time. “No. I’m done with murder and violence for now. I have something much scarier to deal with. My mum.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Alicia didn’t see her mum as an alcoholic just yet, although the older lady certainly indulged more after she and Alicia’s dad split up. Or maybe it was following their retirement; it was hard to nail it down. But as soon as the pair lived together full time, without the buffer of seven hours apart five days a week, they soon realised they had less in common than they could have imagined. Those little foibles, too, the ones easily tolerated day-to-day on an infrequent basis, they soon came to encompass their lives: his nose-picking, his farting and saying “whoops-a-daisy” with a smirk instead of “excuse me”, his insistence on re-crafting the garden “his” way after forty years of his wife being in charge of that area; then there was Dot’s obsession with washing up as soon as a single crumb hit a plate, her itinerary-writing which everyone had to stick to lest she throw her hands up and abandon the plan as “ruined” (a trait, incidentally, he used to love and referred to as her “great org
anisational skills”), and her nagging at him to get started decorating the back bedroom despite there being no pressing need for it…

  Alicia heard it all in her private conversations with them. She became their sounding board. Which was nice at first because her relationship with her parents remained distant for many years.

  Since her first pregnancy.

  Whenever she saw them she thought of it. Whenever she saw a thirteen year-old child, no matter how badly behaved or ugly or dressed like a Halloween freak in summer, she thought of it. After falling pregnant to Richard, she still thought of it, but the shard of glass that broke off in her chest each time was less painful now. It wasn’t the guilt or the morality of abortion that hurt her, though, and she still supported the right of any woman to choose that route; it was that she hadn’t chosen. Her parents badgered her into it.

  “It’ll ruin your life.”

  “You’re too young to know what you want.”

  She was nineteen.

  “You’re so pretty.”

  “You’re too irresponsible.”

  “You’re not prepared.”

  “It’ll ruin your life.”

  “Think of the life the baby will have. With you. In some nasty council flat.”

  “Isn’t it selfish of you?”

  “How much work will we have to do, helping you out?”

  “IT’LL RUIN YOUR LIFE!”

  Eventually, she opted for the path of least resistance which was to allow her father to drive her to a private clinic and—

  No, not tonight.

  Not mere hours after witnessing the disinterment of children placed in the ground by a merciless predator. A predator who would escape the punishment of the Crown due to his clear insanity, driven there by a captor so disturbed by the abuse in turn inflicted upon him, driven to salve those scars by caving in the heads of rival football fans, until eventually he came to terms with his own nature, and calmly removed his own father’s tongue while he was strapped to a bed more filth than mattress.

  Instead, she pulled down a mask of happiness and relief at leaving work for the final time, presented the gift basket like an anthropomorphic lion displaying his new cub, and both her mum and Robbie ooh’d and aah’d. Then she opened the carrier bag containing rum and diet coke, lime and a fresh bag of ice.

  “Cuba Libra!” she trilled, making her way to the kitchen.

  Her two flatmates followed, and watched as she prepared three tall glasses, added two fingers of rum to two of them before her mum said, “Alicia, aren’t you forgetting something?”

  Alicia huffed, and for a split-second, the happiness injections she’d forced inside herself waned. But only a second.

  She said, “Ah-hah!” and took a saucer from a drawer, dribbled a little rum onto it, and turned the final glass upside down. “This was a fun experiment from a few years ago. Not me. Some university in America. But it’s a true story. Take two groups of people. Put them in two different bars. One bar plays sombre music, serving real cocktails, like these.” She dropped ice into each glass with a clattering series of clinks. “The second bar plays upbeat music, Caribbean flavour, eighties classics, you know the sort. Party time, right? But their cocktails and long drinks have virtually zero alcohol. The barman dips the rim in a little liquor so the tang of it hits the taste buds, and the rest is nothing more than fruit and flavouring.” She cut the limes and squeezed the juice into the rum—half a lime in each. “So guess which group starts acting drunk after three or four servings?” She splashed Diet Coke into the glasses in turn, including her own upturned one. “That’s right, I can see it in your eyes. Upbeat music, the illusion of drinking alcohol, and the dry bar was having a much better time than the one with the real alcohol.”

  “And what happened in the other bar?” her mum asked.

  “They had an okay time too. Eventually, they changed the music and everyone got shit-faced and woke up with a hangover. Point is…” She handed out the booze and held up her own glass. “I don’t have to miss out entirely.”

  The three of them drank. Alicia tasted the Cuba Libra but the effect was far weaker than she hoped. Nevertheless, it might be enough to convince her brain she was drinking heavily for real. If she ingested enough, and laughed enough, and didn’t think—

  “So, Robbie came out to the house,” her mum said.

  Alicia put her glass down with a thump. Smile gone. “I thought we discussed this.”

  “We didn’t discuss it. I put it to you. You said no. Then changed the subject. Robbie likes the house, don’t you?”

  They were all still standing in Alicia’s small kitchen.

  Robbie held up her hands. “Hey, it’s a nice house. But I’m happy to stay here. You know … if you want me to stick around.”

  Alicia held attention on her mum. “I want Robbie here. She wants to be here. If it gets too much, then maybe—maybe—we’ll reconsider.”

  “No, dear,” the older lady said, handling her glass again. “I’m not being anyone’s second choice. You either accept my help now, accept it’s best I live with you a while, or you don’t.” She wiped condensation from the outside of her glass. “Simple, really.”

  “Yeah.” Alicia snatched up her drink and poured it away. “It is.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Going out.”

  “Again? You’ve only just retired from the Force.”

  Alicia leaned on the sink. Cupped one hand under her stomach. No reason. It simply felt like the right gesture, and it started her wondering if it was a tic she’d picked up, wondering how often she did it.

  She said, “I’m not ‘retiring’. I’m on maternity leave. I’ll be going back after six months. Maybe nine.”

  “Of course, dear, but think about that. Without my help—”

  “Are you really blackmailing me like this?”

  Alicia turned, her happiness now sapped completely. Robbie backed out of the room, clutching her drink.

  Alicia said, “You need this don’t you? To be in control. Of me, since you can’t control dad anymore.”

  “Alicia…”

  “No, mum. You will not do this. You are my mother, and you will be there for me when I need you. You will give me distance when I need distance. And you will not treat me like some puppet.”

  Alicia would have stormed out but envisioned the stroppy waddle, so simply walked calmly to the door.

  Paused there.

  “One more thing,” she said. “I’ll be out for two hours. You’ll be gone when I get back.”

  “But … but, I’m only trying to—”

  “Help, I know. But your intent isn’t necessarily the result, is it? I’m stressed and upset. When you’re gone, but knowing I can call you any time … it’ll make me less stressed. For now … now I need to see my baby’s dad one last time.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  She was there for an hour. Darkness crept in through the curtains marginally faster at this time of year. The mechanical breathing apparatus grew louder the longer she sat, staring at the man whose genes she was now responsible for moulding into a person and raising into a productive member of society. She often pondered the nature-versus-nurture debate. And here was the only place she could speak of it aloud.

  “If a father is evil,” she said to Richard, “what does that say about his son? In North Korea I heard they call it the ‘criminal seed’ whereby if a son is considered a danger to the ruling party, accused of sedition, the parents are also arrested. The authorities assume something in the genes compelled him to act, so it must have come from them. All the research says it’s nonsense. Every test, every social study concludes that environment dictates how a child turns out later in life. Their parents’ competence and education standards and time spent with the child are the only vaguely consistent factors to happiness. In fact, you need to drill down further to find one facet of a child’s upbringing that seems to bear out clinical comparison: reading. Children who read alongside their pare
nts on a regular basis tend, broadly, to turn out happier as adults.”

  She talked through her cases sometimes, the paperwork she was forced to analyse and input from behind a desk. She used to talk about Richard himself, tell him the latest success that Alfie Rhee uncovered over in the States. Currently, Alfie was working with an FBI taskforce to overturn any miscarriage of justice inflicted by the man before her. Whenever someone erroneously convicted of The Century Killer’s crimes walked free, it gave her great pleasure to explain those victories to him.

  Tonight wasn’t a night for that though.

  Tonight, she treated him like a journal. A sponge to soak up all that ailed her.

  “Reading,” she said. “But not everyone agrees that it’s a deciding factor. Correlation doesn’t always equal causation. In other words, one thing doesn’t necessarily affect another, just because they’re thrown together. Over a ten year period, in the state of Maine in the US, the consumption of non-dairy butter substitute—what we sometimes call margarine—increased in almost exact proportion as divorce rates. Did one affect the other? Did eating margarine create rifts in marriage, or did divorcees simply favour spread made from vegetable oil instead of milk? Some said yes, the latter may be true—healthier alternative, newly single people getting in shape for attracting a new mate … but nothing can ever be proven in that respect. Like child rearing. We have to do the best we can with what we have.”

  A knock at the door.

  She always closed it when chatting to Richard.

  “Hello?” she called.

  The door opened and Donald Murphy poked his head around first, then his shoulder and arm, his hand still on the outer handle. His gaze passed slowly from Alicia, illuminated only by the monitors and individual lights on the side of the bed that Katie added as decoration on Richard’s birthday in June, then over the prone man, now spreading under his covers like a plastic mannequin melting into the bed. Murphy had never visited. Alicia didn’t realise he knew the place existed. She certainly didn’t expect him to come looking for her here.