by Nick Oldham
‘Nah, I get it. Maybe one more night if possible, for which I’ll gladly pay.’
‘We’ll charge you cost price, but just to reiterate, last night was free.’
‘Appreciated.’
‘What’s happening today, then?’
‘Need to get into work. There’s a debrief at eleven a.m., then I’m booked in to see the force counsellor.’ He shrugged. ‘Then I need to go and see Dave Morton’s wife, if the powers that be will let me.’
‘I’m sure they will.’
‘Then, I don’t know. Maybe get home to see the kids if Anna will allow it. She’s pretty shaken and very angry.’ Jake had brought a mug of coffee out with him. He sat alongside Henry. ‘Nice spot.’
‘Very nice,’ Henry agreed. ‘Sometimes I see deer on the green.’
‘And you’re going to retire here?’
Henry nodded.
‘I ran up past the police house,’ Jake said. ‘It’s empty.’
‘Yeah … It’s one of the last rural-beat houses still owned by the constabulary, but they want to sell it. It’s hanging on because the locals are campaigning to get a bobby back on the beat here. The local MP’s on their side, but—’ Henry shrugged. ‘It’s all about money. Decision time soon, I think. Anyway.’ He stood up and drank the last of his coffee. ‘In the hope that my blood-alcohol levels are under the legal limit, I’m going to drive into work and clear my desk, then begin my new career in Human Resources. For a month or so, anyway.’
Henry walked along the corridor towards his office on the first floor of the FMIT block at headquarters – formerly student accommodation for the training centre, but snaffled by what was the SIO team a few years ago and refurbished as their offices, the block now belonged to FMIT, which is what the SIO team had become.
He had often wondered what the last walk would be like, even though he knew this probably wasn’t his last one as such, but he tried to imagine it was.
Curiously, he felt nothing. Thirty-plus years and he felt nothing.
He had expected to be overcome by emotion, to be sobbing uncontrollably, but there was hardly anything other than the taste of bitter resentment and the notion that he had been unfairly ousted before he’d finished what he’d started.
The organization, he thought, could be cruel if it wanted, and in his case, that seemed to be true.
He stopped at the closed door of his office.
It was at that moment he did begin to feel something.
Rage.
It rippled through him. The brass nameplate bearing his name had been unscrewed and removed. All that was left were four screw holes and a rectangular patch of wood that was darker than the faded door.
He swallowed. They had already started to erase him from their memory banks.
‘Bastards,’ he whispered. ‘They don’t fuck about.’
He tried the door: locked. He searched for his key and inserted it into the Yale lock.
Which did not turn.
He tried twisting it in both directions, then withdrew it and peered at the key. The right key.
He slid it back in, turned it, and it was only at that point that the realization dawned on him: nameplate removed, lock changed. Some other bastard cuckoo had taken over his nest.
Dumbfounded, he withdrew the key and stared at the door, blinking away the tears.
He made his way to the dining room at the training centre where he bought himself a coffee from the machine, then sat at a table as far away from anyone else as he could.
Brooding, frustrated, suddenly feeling isolated and vulnerable.
‘Henry,’ came a wary voice behind him.
He did not turn to look or acknowledge, just sipped his coffee.
Rik Dean sat down beside him at the table. ‘Henry,’ he said again.
Henry’s eyes turned to him with the malevolence of the devil.
‘I didn’t ask for this.’
‘And your point is?’
‘And nothing … I didn’t ask for this. I was approached, asked a lot of questions, and what the hell was I supposed to do or say? No, thanks, I don’t want to be a detective super, even if it’s temporary?’
‘Who approached you?’
‘The chief.’
‘And what exactly did he ask you?’
‘If I’d be prepared to take on your caseload when you retired. At that moment I didn’t even know you’d put your ticket in, Henry, so I just said yes. I had no idea it was to be, like, now.’
‘I’ve basically been binned, Rik. Yeah, I was going to retire, but on my own terms, not with a boot up my backside.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.’
‘I can only assume you did your part in shafting me, Rik. Cheers, mate.’
‘You know what I think of you, Henry – as a colleague and as a friend,’ Rik said genuinely. ‘And as a prospective brother-in-law.’
Henry snorted. ‘You’ll be shagging me next.’
Jake spent his day in a haze, being debriefed and wheeled into various offices to be spoken to by a series of high-ranking officers and support staff, before being told to go home and wait to be contacted whilst ‘decisions were made’. He knew this was the start of not knowing what was going to happen to him. He knew he had lost his place on the firearms unit, was being investigated by the IPCC and was probably starting a period of limbo in which he would be shunned by the force. He would not hear anything for months, nor be kept updated with any developments. One thing was certain: he would be kept at arm’s-length until it all resolved itself. But even then, when he was found to have acted lawfully (of which he was certain), the force would probably still not know what to do with him.
It didn’t help he had no home to go to: a bolt hole where he could lick his wounds, surrounded by people he loved.
That side of it, of course, was his own doing.
He was hugely grateful to Henry Christie for last night, taking him under his wing and giving him a bed for the night – and getting riotously drunk. Jake had needed that, but he also knew he could not stay at the Tawny Owl, as great as it might be. He needed a cushion of one more night there, just to give him time to sort out his immediate life, but that was all.
Throughout the morning his mind whirled, continuously thinking about Anna and his family and how he’d made a right royal screw-up of things just because he’d been weak and fallen into bed with a younger colleague who’d seemed to be everything that Anna wasn’t.
He now knew that was complete tosh.
He desperately tried to think of how he could get back with Anna who, apart from the infidelity, must have been suffering terribly from the other events she’d been part of the day before.
After a gruelling hour with the superintendent in charge of operations, Jake wandered into the training-centre dining room about three p.m. and saw Henry Christie sitting alone at one of the tables. He walked over and asked him if he could buy him a coffee, which seemed to startle Henry, who had been in a bit of a trance.
‘That would be good,’ Henry said, slurping the last dregs of his current brew.
Jake brought two new cups back to the table, and Henry raised his eyebrows at him questioningly.
‘Not going well,’ Jake said. ‘The whirlwind of interviews has kept me going, but now I’ve been told I can go, I don’t quite know what to do … How about you?’
‘Similar. No office to go to; they’ve done a handover to my successor,’ he said, almost choking over that last word. ‘Went over to HR, who looked at me like I was Shrek … Apparently, the head of HR had not been told I was going to be with them for a few weeks, so I just spun out and left ’em to it. I’m having this brew, then heading north. Will you be there tonight? You’re most welcome.’
‘I think I will be, and thanks again.’ Jake sipped his coffee. ‘Just one more night. I think I might have somewhere to go after that: a divorced mate of mine said I can crash with him, however long it takes. Can’t wait for all that fast food, TV and the Xbox,’
he lied. ‘All because I couldn’t keep my pants up.’
‘Been there,’ Henry said with a smirk. ‘Took me a long time to realize that family is where it’s at.’ He thought about Kate and how she had been taken from him before there was time for him to make real amends for his past misdemeanours.
‘But you’ve got Alison.’
‘And I won’t let that go wrong this time,’ he said. ‘My daughters are both behind me now. Ginny – Alison’s stepdaughter – is all for us, too. I’m determined to make it work – so maybe this is all to the good, me getting booted out. I could easily have let it all drag on.’
‘I can see Alison adores you.’
‘And I can see you know you’ve made a mistake, and if Anna loves you – I mean, you don’t just stop loving someone like that—’ Henry clicked his fingers. ‘So my advice, not drunken this time, is: go and prostrate yourself at her feet, beg forgiveness. She’ll do it … and then you make things good again.’
Jake nodded as Henry spoke.
‘There is one thing,’ Henry said hesitantly. ‘Whilst I was hanging about in the corridor at HR while they were panicking about what to do with me … and I don’t know if it’s of interest … I saw a notice on the board that the rural beat at Kendleton is to be reopened. They’ve found funding from somewhere for a PC for three years. The house is rent-free with an option to buy at market value. Just a thought.’ Henry shrugged.
‘Oh, it’s you.’
Jackie Powers glared balefully at Jake on the doorstep of his own house. She had answered the door on his knock.
‘Yeah. Can I come in?’
‘Anna doesn’t want to see you.’
‘She’s my wife. This is my house.’
Jackie laughed harshly. ‘Really?’
‘Just let me in, eh?’ Jake said, deflated.
‘Tell you what.’ Jackie looked down her nose at him. ‘I’ll ask her, shall I?’
She reversed back in and closed the front door gently but firmly in his face – the second time such a thing had happened to him in the last few hours.
He stood waiting, feeling stupid and embarrassed, thinking that all the neighbours’ eyes were on him, peeking from behind the curtains, sneering and chortling: adulterer and killer. A parallel, silly part of him wondered what those words would look like on his tombstone.
The door opened again. Jackie rocked her head and stood aside for him to enter. As he came alongside her she hissed, ‘I’ll be outside having a fag. If you upset her in any way, shape or form, I’ll kick your sorry arse out of here myself, and don’t think I won’t.’
‘I’m sure you will.’ Jake made to move on, then stopped. ‘By the way, I’m sorry about the accusation – the custody record thing.’
Jackie’s face remained impassive, and she said nothing.
Jake turned into the living room and looked across at Anna, who was sitting on one of the armchairs in her housecoat, hands clasped on her lap, a tissue scrunched up. He gasped at her appearance: drawn, exhausted, bags under her eyes, her hair unkempt, the dressings still on her face … but yet, beyond that he could see her beauty, maybe for the first time in two years, that trait he’d been idiotic enough to miss because he had been such a fool.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Hi.’
‘Can I sit?’
She nodded.
He sat on the settee. ‘How are you?’
‘Not good. Jackie’s been great.’
‘Yes.’ He bit his tongue, not wanting to say something he would regret. ‘Tough day yesterday.’
‘In so many ways.’
Jake picked his thumbnail. ‘I’ve been binned from the ARV.’
‘No surprise there.’
‘Suppose not. Look, I haven’t come here with any prepared speech or anything … I just want to speak from the heart.’
Anna waited.
‘I want to say I am truly sorry. I forgot the meaning of love and the importance of family. I forgot all about loyalty and commitment, sticking together through hard times … But I do know that I love you and the kids, and you are my world. You mean everything to me, and I’ll do anything to get you back. I know things will never be as they were, but they can be better.’
‘You mean once I get over the fact you’ve been shagging some slag behind my back?’ she said. ‘You know how much that hurts me even just to think about that, to imagine?’ Tears formed in her eyes.
‘I know.’
‘I blame myself,’ she declared then.
‘Eh? No.’
‘For letting it get that way, for letting us get that way … for letting me get like this.’ She pointed at her face. ‘Dowdy, boring … a fucking housewife! I—’
‘No, no,’ Jake cut in. ‘You’re wrong. I was the idiot.’
‘We’re in a rut.’
‘Yeah, maybe, but that doesn’t excuse me cheating on you. I’m so sorry. I don’t want us to split up. I know it’ll be tough … I know,’ he stressed weakly. ‘But if that’s what you want, then I’ll go with it.’
‘I don’t. I don’t want that, but you’ve hurt me so much, Jake, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to trust you again.’ One of her tears rolled down her cheek into the dressing.
‘I know it sounds corny, but I want to hold you.’
She shook her head. ‘If only it was that easy.’
‘I’ll never let you down again, never ever,’ he promised.
‘But I don’t think we can go back to how it was, even if we stay together.’
‘Then let’s get out of the rut.’
‘How?’
‘I have an idea on that.’
‘This is your idea?’ Anna moaned.
It was an hour later. At Jake’s suggestion, Anna had taken a quick shower to freshen up, dressed in her jeans and a top, and packed an overnight bag, and then the two of them had got into Jake’s car. Without a further word, Jake had driven on to and up the M6, coming off at Lancaster up the Lune Valley, then sprung off towards Kendleton and parked up on the driveway of the empty, detached police house.
He had got Anna out and was standing alongside her in front of the building. ‘Look … the beat is going to reopen again. Apparently, there’s funding for three years. The house is rent-free with an option to buy … We could move out here, make a fresh start … What d’you think?’
‘Jake, it looks a complete mess,’ she said truthfully.
She was not wrong. Although structurally sound, and despite signs of some major repairs to the front of the house, it had an air of neglect and possibly damp. But it was a substantial property, brick built, definitely large enough to accommodate the family and more. Plus, it had an attached garage on one side and an integral ground-floor office on the other. What was more, it was in a superb position on one of the roads rising out of Kendleton and had a huge garden, which Anna’s heart frequently panged for.
‘Could we afford it?’ she asked. ‘We would have to buy it because we don’t want chucking out on our ears after three years. A place like this, even if it is in shit order … Bet it would cost more than we could make from selling ours. I don’t know, Jake. I don’t know.’
‘We need an adventure … and somewhere where we can fall in love again.’
THIRTEEN
Three months later
‘Nothing fucking works.’
The gas boiler made a dangerous, belching, gurgling sound, shook dramatically, and then, reluctantly, fired up with a loud bang as the gas ignited. Jake and Anna had watched the process, realizing that if it exploded they would be blown to smithereens.
‘Well, at least it got going,’ Jake said. ‘And by the way, I love it when you talk dirty.’
Anna sighed, and they backed out of the garage in which the boiler was situated, turned and stood side by side to look at the day. It was cold and frosty, winter beginning to creep in as the days grew shorter. Their breath came in visible clouds, and Jake tried to blow smoke rings. He slipped his arm around Anna’s wai
st, then hugged her tightly as a red deer stag appeared from the trees opposite, shook its head and fine set of antlers and simply trotted regally up the road in front of them, its breath hissing like a steam locomotive down its wide nostrils.
The two humans stood stock still and watched in fascinated awe as the beast clipped past, seemingly oblivious to their presence, then dived back into the woodland further up. Both then let out their breath and laughed delightedly.
‘Apparently, they come down off the moors into the valleys during cold weather,’ Jake said knowledgeably. He looked at Anna, and their eyes locked. ‘I’ll get an engineer to look at the boiler and price up a new one,’ he promised. ‘It’ll need replacing before winter really kicks in.’
‘Please do that,’ she said.
They walked into the chilly house to the kitchen at the back that Jake had refurbished bit by bit over the last few weeks. It was starting to look good, but as for the rest of the property, that was still a problem. Windows that did not close properly, a leaking roof that was proving hard to repair, and damp from another source in the living room that seemed to be creeping up from the foundations.
The children were at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, sullenly devouring their first meal of the day.
‘Hi, guys,’ Jake said.
They looked at him with just as much sullenness as they ate and said nothing.
‘Taxi’ll be here in five minutes,’ Anna warned them.
Danny shrugged. Emma kept a straight face.
‘Just seen a deer walk up the road,’ Jake said with enthusiasm.
‘Wow,’ Danny said, underwhelmed. ‘That supposed to make us feel great, back to nature? Fact is, I don’t want to be here. I want to be back where we were, with friends I know, not these stuck-up nobs in Lancaster.’
‘Danny, sweetie,’ Anna cooed. She crossed the room and held his head to her bosom. ‘It’s early days, and this is a new start.’
‘For you two,’ he said. ‘I didn’t need a new start. I was fine where I was … It was you who screwed up.’ He glared fierily at Jake, who started to redden with annoyance.
‘We’re a family,’ he said, ‘and we move as a family.’