Tightrope

by Andrea Frazer

  Olivia’s mouth had fallen open with shock, and her head was whirling. Was this the woman that Hal had slept with? What could she say to her? What could she do to get rid of her: she wanted to punch her in the mouth – frumpy and let herself go, indeed! – but knew this would not be a good idea, given her profession. It would look so bad on her work record, a conviction for assault. And fighting with the woman she now saw as her rival was not very seemly. She couldn’t suppress the violence she felt building inside her, though. The trollop! And to turn up here on the doorstep …

  At that moment, the woman gave her a tremendous shove in the chest and marched past her into the interior of the house, calling, ‘Hal, where are you? I need to talk to you about the future – our future.’

  Olivia landed on her buttocks on the hall floor, all the air leaving her body with a loud whooshing sound while, at the same time, she became aware of voices coming from the kitchen: Hal’s bass boom mixed in with the higher voices of Ben and Hibbie, all raised in anger, but unable to make out anything that was said.

  Hibbie came rushing through first, appalled to find her mother on the floor and immediately helping her to her feet, muttering, ‘Mad bitch! Did she hurt you, Mum?’

  Almost before Olivia had had time to dust herself down and inform her daughter that she was uninjured, Ben and Hal came through, one either side of the woman, gripping an arm apiece, and ejected her through the front door, from the other side of which the woman began to pound again, and shout.

  Olivia immediately grabbed her work phone and rang in a complaint to the station, with a very sparse and thin explanation, then looked at Hal and lost all control, breaking down into sobs of grief and loss, the emotion that the violent feelings had induced in her suddenly turning her legs to jelly and reducing her to helpless weeping

  Hal immediately put his arms around her to support her, steering her away from the door and back on to her seat at the table, whilst muttering that all would be well, while she sobbed, ‘Don’t touch me. Don’t you dare lay a finger on me, you unfaithful bastard,’ then holding on to him for all she was worth and whispering, ‘Don’t leave me; don’t leave me; please, don’t leave me,’ her head buried in his midriff.

  The kids trailed after them back to the kitchen, all appetites disappeared but, at least with two substantial oak doors closed, the clamour that must be supposed still to be coming from Hal’s erstwhile mistress was nowhere near so loud. This problem was going to take a lot more resolving than they had realised now this had happened, and Hal prepared himself for a menu serving only portions of humble pie, for some time to come.

  ‘Who the fuck was that lunatic, Dad?’ asked Ben, sounding quite aggressive.

  ‘Ditto from me. Who the fuck?’ echoed Hibbie, both of them using uncharacteristically coarse language.

  Hal gave them both one of his quelling glances that said unequivocally ‘not now’ and Olivia turned her gaze on them beseechingly, her face as white as milk. The cat would be out of the bag soon enough. Until then, he’d like to keep them in innocence for a little bit longer before he became the bad guy.

  There’d be an awful lot of coming to terms for all four of them, if they were to remain as a happy family unit, and it was all his fault. No! It wasn’t. The blame had to be shared, but this was definitely not the time to air that view. He would have to rebuild Olivia’s trust and confidence in him and get the kids on side, while subtly introducing the subject of him being taken for granted; used as a sounding board; a whipping boy; a domestic goddess – hah! That one almost made him smile.

  That the situation was able to be resolved he had little doubt, but it was going to take some time – maybe even years – and effort from all of them, before they could get back to anything like the way they used to be with each other. Betrayal and infidelity couldn’t be mended with a sticking plaster. There had to be long-term healing involved, and a lot of will as well as skill. For now, the best that could happen would be an uneasy truce.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Seven thirty the next morning found Olivia sitting back at the kitchen table, alone this time, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. She had given up smoking years ago, but had felt the need this morning, and had bummed one off Ben, whom she knew smoked on the quiet.

  She was still in her dressing gown, her eyes bloodshot and swollen, her hair all over the place – in fact, she felt that she definitely resembled the wreck of the Hesperus – when there was a firm rap on the glass panel of the back door. Who on earth could that be this time of the morning? Surely not that bloody woman back again?

  With murder in her eyes, she flung open the door to find a rather grim-faced DCI Buller waiting outside, and was stunned into silence. ‘I heard about what happened last night,’ he said in an unexpectedly sympathetic voice, knowing only too well the toll that the job could take on a marriage. Still without a word, she stood aside so that he could enter.

  In total silence, she sat back down in her chair and took a recklessly long drag on the cigarette. Then ruined everything by coughing. ‘Choke it up, chicken,’ he advised with a grim smile, then went on, ‘Look, I’ve had a word with everyone who had heard about what went off here last night. I don’t know the ins and outs of it, and I don’t want to. Suffice to say that I made it quite clear that anyone who breathed a word about you having a mort of trouble out here would be strung up by the bollocks. You should have seen the women’s faces.’

  Olivia granted this the smallest of smiles. ‘I’m not expecting you in to the factory today, because if you came in looking like that, everybody would think you’d taken up cage-fighting, and that’s not a very ladylike hobby.’ Again she smiled slightly. She had had no idea that Buller had this understanding side; it was a revelation to her.

  ‘Now,’ he continued, before she could get in a word, ‘I want you to stay off until you know you can come in without breaking down every half-hour’ – again a half-smile to let her know that he wasn’t being harsh. ‘Are you still up for these raids on Friday?’

  ‘I couldn’t do the brothel. That’s just asking too much of myself given the circumstances – everything’s too raw …’ Here, tears did begin to slide down her cheeks.

  ‘The nursery it is for you, then. That’s what we’d previously agreed, and it still stands. Look, I’ll keep you up to date with any developments on the case, and you get sorted what you need to get sorted. The whole force won’t disintegrate without you, whatever you might privately think. Chin up, Hardy. It isn’t the end of the world, even if it feels like it at the moment.’

  She gave him a watery smile in gratitude at what this must have cost this usually so bombastically macho and in-your-face man. ‘Thanks, guv,’ she murmured. As he gave her a cheery wave goodbye and closed the door behind him she wondered if Hal was awake yet.

  Since his disclosure two evenings ago, he had not slept in the marital bed, and she couldn’t decide whether this was a good thing, or a very bad thing. Was it out of common decency and consideration for her feelings, or was it a sign that their marriage was over? She just didn’t know where they were at the moment, or what the future held, although his indignation the evening before when that slut had turned up at his house – his actual home where his actual family lived – had been heartening. Unless it was all an act. With a sigh of utter despair, she trailed upstairs to get dressed. She’d bum another fag off Ben, have another cup of coffee, then go out to buy a packet of cigarettes of her own.

  Her muddled thinking at the moment was that she’d rather die of a smoking-related disease within a family, than go without this drug and live longer, but without her husband. She felt all at sea; up the creek without a paddle; rudderless. How strange that all these analogies were connected with water; evidently a by-product of all the years she had spent living in a coastal town with its own river mouth.

  Ben willingly gave her another of his precious cigarettes, for he was not a heavy or even regular smoker, when she promised to
pay him back with a third one as interest, later in the morning, and after throwing on an old pair of jeans and a not too smart T-shirt, she returned to her jumbled, racing thoughts and the homely feeling of the kitchen.

  When she had sunk another mug of deplorable instant coffee, the flavour of which was actually helped by the unaccustomed taste of smoke in her mouth, she would nip down to the little shop and get herself a packet of twenty, then, when she came home she’d change into something more smart. If Hal had been sniffing around another piece of skirt, then she ought to make a bit more effort with her appearance, in case he was tempted to do it again. The woman had actually called her a frump who had let herself go. She should take this as a warning.

  The next couple of days were peppered with high-volume, triumphant calls from the DCI, as the documents were slowly translated, but his first big coup was the van.

  ‘Absolute dynamite, that rusty old white thing was,’ he crowed.

  ‘Well, it did have two corpses in it.’

  ‘No, no, no, you naïve woman! It had a secret compartment in the back with enough room behind it for all the contraband you could ever want, or room for a few cramped-up illegals. I’ve got a theory. The illegals were all part of a much bigger network – referred to in several pages of writing as “parcels” – all going to that nursery.

  ‘The drugs the sniffer dogs found at that house were used to keep the illegals under control, and we theorise that they worked under duress at either the nursery or as prostitutes. It they were doped up to the eyeballs, then they wouldn’t be able to go out or need wages. They were slaves, paid in narcotics.

  ‘We reckon that the class As that had been getting through were about to increase because there was a network of small-time distributors being set up to sell them on, on the streets. Those two Moroccans were sent a list of names that they were supposed to contact about this – all of them known to us as small-time dealers – and a list of young kids who have been in trouble with us before and were probably heading for a life of crime. Thank God that didn’t get off the ground – they all copped it before they had a chance to start.

  ‘The list was evidently delivered by hand, nothing being trusted to the post, and it was on Kharboub’s desk still in its envelope; but it had obviously been opened and perused. That would be so that he wouldn’t approach any of those who were already in the pay of the big boys. He wanted his own distribution network for what he managed to ’alf-inch from the larger consignments.

  ‘He would only be paid so much for each “parcel” delivered, so he was probably going to skim all future traffic when it was brought in; cut the drugs with something to reduce purity, but leave him with a nice little earner of his own.

  ‘I told you that several of the Channel ports have got a marker on the van to be stopped when it next passed through their jurisdiction –’

  ‘Hold on a minute, guv. Isn’t a lot of this just speculation?’

  ‘Speculation, my arse! It’s all going to be provable when we’ve got these raids out of the way.’

  ‘If you say so.’ Olivia really wasn’t in the mood for all this good cheer and self-congratulation. She was more worried about Hal, who had become very silent, and was spending quite a lot of time reading the Bible, as he had been brought up to do.

  Lauren hadn’t been in touch either, except for one quick call to confirm that the inspector was on sick leave, and that had been it. She hadn’t even asked what was wrong with her, so Olivia’s relationship with her work-partner was still frosty, both professionally and personally. Things couldn’t get much worse.

  ‘Ah, Inspector, you are in. Good.’ Olivia entered the office the next morning and once more Buller’s relentlessly cheery tones assaulted her ears. ‘Just thought I’d let you know that we brought a drugs dog into Ali Kebab’s flat and found small quantities of both cocaine and heroin, and a note that confirmed that larger “packets” were going to be dispatched in the near future. How’s that for confirmation of conjecture for you? Not “parcels” this time, but “packets”.

  ‘And the skunk farm was also him going out on his own. As he’d need dealers for that, why not get them to deal in what he had skimmed and cut, too?’

  ‘Congratulations, guv,’ Olivia replied in a lacklustre voice.

  ‘Have you not sorted out that problem with your old man yet? That’s not like you.’

  ‘No, guv, and no, guv. It’s going to be a tough one, but I’ll definitely be there on Friday. Just confirm the time and where the teams are meeting, and I’ll make sure I’m ready and waiting.’

  ‘Chin up, Inspector. I’ll bet you can do anything you put your mind to. I hear you two have been together, er, for ever. You can’t blow it just because of a teensy-weensy slip-up on the part of a weak and easily led man.’ He, personally, had allowed his soon-to-be ex-wife three strikes before she was out: out of his home, out of his marriage, and out of his life.

  ‘Bye, guv. See you Friday.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  On Friday evening, Olivia dressed in dark regulation issue trousers – looser now, as she had lost some weight over the last few days, and a matching police issue long-sleeved pullover. She didn’t go so far as to put any sludge-coloured make-up on her cheeks and forehead to enhance the camouflage, but she was feeling the first stirrings of enthusiasm she had experienced since Hal’s shattering confession, at the thought of nailing these bastards, as she left the house.

  Not long after she arrived, the whole contingent from the police was assembled; a contingent of uniformed officers and as many female officers who were available, as this case involved a number of women, and would need tactful handling. Devenish had evidently been advised by a fellow senior officer to orchestrate this spread of the sexes, as he wouldn’t have had the nous to initiate it himself.

  Immigration officers weren’t far behind them, joining them on the piece of wasteland screened by a row of Leylandii not too far from the Nissen hut. They included a similar percentage of females, so maybe it was the senior Immigration officer who had spoken to Devenish, so that he didn’t misunderstand what their task was this evening, and just who the targets were.

  Instructions as to the spread of the officers involved, and the approaches of the target building from a number of directions, were shared in a subdued hiss, and the time was checked. The two raids were to take place simultaneously so that there could be no whistle-blower from one target to another.

  ‘We go in on the stroke of ten, so we’ll have to leave here about twenty minutes before, and moving in as silently as possible. I’ve synchronised my timing with that of the Immigration officer leading the raid on the brothel, and they should be getting into position shortly after us. Now, think “success”. I don’t want any of you wimping out at the last minute. We need to get the people responsible for this behind bars as quickly and as efficiently as possible.’

  The other raiding party was just coming together, in unmarked cars and down dark alleyways not far from the supposedly respectable, detached Edwardian house that was their target. This had once been a main road, but had been downgraded after the building of the ring road. This would not have decreased its custom, though, as there was a sufficiently private back alley leading to an entrance through a tall wooden gate at the back of the rear garden.

  The punters wouldn’t know what had hit them, and neither would the girls, probably being in too relaxed a state from the drugs they had been given. As for those who supervised this part of the business, they were in for a surprise, and the surprise included handcuffs and some fairly unsympathetic treatment.

  The back entrance was being kept under discreet surveillance, and three officers had in their possession the heavy device known within the service as ‘the big, red key’, which would ensure that there was no delay in their entry.

  Rather more discreetly, a small team from the Drugs squad was targeting the greenhouses of the nursery itself, hoping to find evidence, maybe, of drugs being grown here. This h
ad been a sub-plot organised by Buller off his own bat, for he realised that this would be the ideal spot, not only to grow cannabis, but also for Kharboub to have got his seedlings from, maybe smuggling them out a few at a time, or even getting some of the girls to bring them out somehow and exchange them for a spliff to keep them going between hits.

  At precisely ten o’clock, in two geographically diverse sites in Littleton, a shrill whistle sounded – a police signal so antiquated as to be more or less forgotten – quickly followed by the pounding of feet and the splintering of wood, and both teams were in.

  At a third, the entrance was more sedate. The only lights on behind the sea of glass were ones that helped the plants to grow, and it was hoped that some of those plants would be mind-altering and, ultimately, deliciously profit-making.

  As the teams swung into action, police vans positioned themselves to take in those who were brought in for questioning.

  The brothel raid took the occupants by total surprise. A number of very relaxed, pretty girls along with the requisite number of very panic-stricken men were rounded out of beds or other little hideaways, and led from the house. None of the girls was English, and there would have to be interpreters brought in to question them, but their native tongues would have to be ascertained first.

  The most sinister, and for Lauren, embarrassing room was a cellar, a space where there were whips, riding crops and canes hanging from the walls, and a number of leather articles of clothing that she didn’t want to inspect too closely, especially a full-head mask that had a zip for a mouth, and looked absolutely terrifying.

  The current occupants of this space were dressed in rubber, and Lauren was absolutely horrified to recognise one of the county’s chief superintendents. This would fuck up his police career in no uncertain terms. How were the mighty about to fall!

  A second transport van had arrived, and the men were put into one, the working girls into another. They were all young and pretty, but with only a few words of English between them. God knows what they’d been through, and what they would face in the future, but Lauren was sure that they would rue the day they chose to come to England for a better life, till the end of their days.