Before I Say I Do

by Vicki Bradley

  ‘There’s only one way to find out.’ Kowalski downed his coffee and stood up.

  *

  Winter stood up when she walked into his office behind Kowalski, his face reddening and his hands balled into fists. He turned his cold gaze on Kowalski. ‘What are you playing at?’

  ‘You need to read this.’ Kowalski handed it to Winter. ‘It shows Kanwar was the one calling Saunders. Not DC Loxton.’

  Winter eyed them suspiciously, grabbed the envelope and leafed through the pages. Winter checked his mobile to be sure the number was Kanwar’s and then stared at Kowalski in amazement. ‘How did you get this?’

  ‘It was left on my desk.’ Kowalski shrugged.

  ‘How did you really get this?’ Winter held Kowalski’s gaze.

  ‘As I said, sir, it was on my desk.’

  Winter eyed Kowalski and Loxton warily. She didn’t flinch.

  ‘I thought you should see it straight away,’ Kowalski said. ‘Being as you’ve put Kanwar in charge of the Webb case and the first hearing’s on Monday.’

  ‘Shit.’ Winter rubbed his face with his hands, he looked suddenly tired. ‘Kowalski, you’re in charge of the Webb case. You go to court on Monday.’

  Kowalski nodded. ‘It’s a big case, boss. I could do with a deputy. Someone who knows the ins and outs.’ Kowalski glanced at Loxton and then back to Winter.

  ‘You never spoke to Saunders about this case?’ Winter asked her.

  ‘Never, sir,’ she said.

  Winter sighed and shook his head. ‘Kanwar was with me when the uniform called me about the body in the Thames. And he knew Talbot had been arrested. I didn’t think for a moment it would be him. I’m usually a good judge of character, but this time I got it wrong. If you want a transfer after all this is over, I’d understand.’

  Loxton glanced at Kowalski. ‘I’d like to stay on the team.’

  Winter smiled. ‘Good, I’m glad to hear that. There’ll still need to be a formal investigation into the leaks to the press. The DPS will need to interview you and finish interrogating your phones.’

  ‘They won’t find anything, sir.’

  Winter nodded as he sat down and opened his desk drawer. He held Loxton’s warrant card in his hand. ‘You’re on light duties for now, until you’re formally cleared by the DPS. And you’re to be supervised by Kowalski. You can assist him with the trial, but nothing more. Help with the case papers, getting it all finished off.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ She held out her hand, willing it to stay steady.

  He handed her the warrant card. ‘Remember: light duties only, so no running around chasing suspects. And don’t say a word of this to anyone. Let’s keep this in-house. I’ll update DPS now.’

  Loxton slid her warrant card into her inside pocket and tried to hold back tears. All the fear and stress dissipated and she realized she’d been wound so tight she’d been close to breaking.

  ‘Monday’s going to be a busy day for you both,’ Winter said. ‘You should head home.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Kowalski turned and headed out of the office. Winter gave Loxton a single nod and she returned it before leaving. She felt shaky inside, as if she’d escaped near death.

  She caught up with Kowalski, who was striding towards their bank of desks. ‘He didn’t apologize outright,’ she said.

  Kowalski laughed. ‘You didn’t expect him to, did you?’ He began digging around his desk, shifting paperwork and stained mugs. He stopped for a moment. ‘Winter is sorry, trust me, and that should be enough. Let me take you home if I can ever find my car key.’

  She reached past him and grabbed it from where it had been lodged behind his monitor and passed it to him.

  They headed out of the police station and were met by the press. The journalists surged forwards, but Kowalski stepped in front of her. The bodies stopped short when faced with his large frame.

  ‘We don’t have a press statement,’ he said. ‘When we have one, you’ll be contacted.’

  ‘Officer, can you tell us if anyone has died?’ A female journalist pushed her purple glasses up her nose, pen poised ready as she hung onto his every word.

  ‘Miss, we can’t tell you anything. Your understanding is appreciated.’ He headed towards the exit doors, and Loxton had a hard job keeping up with him. As they went outside, a figure followed them.

  ‘Still on the case? I thought you’d been suspended, Alana.’ Saunders’s eyes were gleeful. He popped a cigarette into his mouth and held the packet out to her and Kowalski. ‘No hard feelings?’

  She put her hand out for a cigarette, and then knocked the proffered packet out of Saunders’s hand. She placed her foot on top of the box and ground it into the pavement. ‘If you ever come near me again, I will do that to your scrotum.’

  Saunders’s smile dropped. ‘You two are going to be in serious shit when your boss finds out you’re still on the job. And then your new friend here might get suspended too.’

  ‘You run along and tell him,’ Kowalski said. ‘That’s what you’ve both been doing this whole time.’

  Saunders laughed. ‘That’s right, me and Winter. How did you guess?’

  ‘We’re not detectives for nothing,’ Kowalski said. Loxton saw what Kowalski was doing – he didn’t want Saunders destroying the mobile, he wanted him to think they were clueless.

  ‘You’ll never prove it,’ Saunders said, enjoying himself.

  ‘We will though,’ Kowalski said. ‘Winter will slip up at some point. Come on, Alana, you’ve wasted enough of your time on this piece of shit.’

  ‘What? Are you two lovers now? Pull the other one. It takes longer than that to get over me.’

  Kowalski grabbed Loxton’s hand and strode away from Saunders towards the car, which was parked across the road. He stopped after a few steps and turned quickly around to face her, leaning down as he pulled her to him. His face tilted to the side and he pushed his lips into hers, kissing her deeply.

  A shiver went down her spine, and a light grew inside her stomach. He pulled away, and she was left breathless, looking up at him. He then put his arm around her waist and led her to the car, opening the passenger-side door for her. He climbed into the driver’s side. Saunders was still staring at her from where they’d left him. His cigarette was hanging out of his mouth and his arms dangled by his sides.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Kowalski. ‘I shouldn’t have done that, but it showed that prick, hey?’ He glanced at her nervously.

  She could still feel his warm lips against hers, and her stomach tingled. ‘Of course, it’s fine. It did show him.’ She stole a sideways look. His face was as flushed as hers. He revved the engine hard and pulled out of the space, spinning the wheels. Then he raced out of the car park and onto the London roads.

  Chapter 56

  Epilogue

  Jenny Hughes

  18 months later

  ‘Rachel,’ I said. ‘Rachel, come back here.’

  Mum laughed. ‘She’s so much like you; I can’t believe it.’

  The early spring sun broke through the thin clouds, but its light wasn’t strong enough yet to warm my skin. I pushed my hands deeper into my pockets.

  ‘How did you cope?’ I said. ‘It’s so hard.’ Rachel had turned around and was crawling through the sand towards me.

  ‘You get used to it.’ She cooed at Rachel, encouraging her. ‘Heard from Mark recently?’

  ‘He called at the weekend. He won’t be able to come at Easter after all; he can’t get a prison day release.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’

  I shook my head at her. ‘It’s a good thing, Mum. It’s too soon. I’d rather not see him at all, but then there’s Rachel.’ I struggled not to raise my voice.

  Rachel was making steady progress through the sand. She stopped and threw her head up to check I was still there. Then her head lolled forward as she carried on her marathon.

  ‘You don’t think you’ll ever get back together, you and Mark?’

  ‘Never.�
� A wave of anger threatened; it surprised me. I thought I’d got past all that.

  She nodded and we sat in silence, the weight of the past pressing down on us. There was so much I wanted to say, but I didn’t know where to start. It would take time, a long time, but as my mum and I sat together watching Rachel crawling in the sandpit, somehow I knew we would get there. Rachel had come along and brought us all closer, had helped to heal, to make us live again.

  Rachel dug into the sand with her hands. Occasionally she would laugh loudly, thrilled as the sand sprinkled around her. The noise made my stomach flip with joy, but a sadness was always behind it. I missed my sister.

  ‘Thanks for all your help. I can’t imagine doing this without you and Dad.’ The words were feeble, but between them were the vast amounts of money they’d used to bail my business out after Mark had got us into so much debt, and the endless babysitting. They’d uprooted their lives, selling their house in Milton Keynes and downsizing to be nearer to Rachel and me. They were trying hard to make up for all that lost time and so was I.

  ‘We wanted to help. To be part of your life again.’ She took my hand, gently squeezed it and let it go.

  ‘I’m sorry I pushed you out. I’ve missed you.’ I couldn’t look her in the eye, afraid that I might start crying.

  ‘How’s the business going?’ she asked.

  ‘Great, now Mark’s not leaching the profit from it.’ I couldn’t mention his name without feeling disgusted at myself for letting him run the books for me. All that time I thought my business was dragging us down, taking too long to get off the ground, but it had been him.

  ‘Dad said you were starting an Open University course?’

  I nodded. ‘Accountancy and business. I always let other people do it for me but it’s about time I did it for myself.’

  ‘It’s a lot to take on, love.’ My mum was about to say more but thought better. ‘Do you need us to take her next week?’

  ‘If you could have her Monday and Tuesday, that’d be great.’

  Mum nodded. I knelt to scoop Rachel up. She’d reached the end of the sand pit. In front of her was the asphalt floor of the playground, too rough for her soft knees. She wriggled for a moment, frustrated by being restricted, but then settled on my lap. I kissed her red cheek, brushed sand off her hands.

  ‘You’re getting hot, little lady.’ I peeled off her winter coat.

  ‘She looks just like you when you were that age. It’s uncanny.’ Mum shook her head as she stroked Rachel’s blonde curls from her forehead. Mum’s eyes were shining but she managed to hold back the tears. We both knew what she meant when she said that.

  Rachel looked nothing like me, but every bit like her namesake.

  Acknowledgements

  Without readers, there would be no books, so thank you for taking the time and energy to read this one. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  I’m eternally grateful to the Write Here, Right Now competition run by Simon & Schuster UK, Darley Anderson Literary Agency and the Bradford Literature Festival; without it, none of this would have happened. I’m indebted to the judges – Anne Perry, Jo Dickinson, Camilla Bolton and Tanera Simons – for giving me this opportunity.

  A special mention to my brilliant editor, Bethan Jones, for your patience and expertise. Thank you to everyone at Simon & Schuster UK, for your endless enthusiasm for this book and the beautiful cover.

  Thank you to my amazing agent, Camilla Bolton, for your faith in me and for championing DC Alana Loxton. Thank you to everyone at Darley Anderson for their continued support.

  To my colleagues in the Met Police, it was a privilege to work alongside you. A special thanks to the Met, for allowing me a career break to pursue this dream. And to DC Fiona Loxton, thank you for letting me borrow your surname – Alana is forever grateful and so am I.

  Thanks to my excellent teachers at City University London for passing on their writing secrets: Claire McGowan, Laura Wilson and William Ryan.

  Thank you to the wonderful Alex Marwood, for being the best mentor I could have wished for and generously sharing so much writing wisdom, wine and time. It’s not every day you get to meet one of your heroes and be taught by them.

  I’m so grateful to the other writers on the City Crime Writing MA, especially to Finn Clarke, Paul Durston, Fraser Massey (thanks for the title of this book!), Vicki Jones and Jane Phillips. Thank you for your continued insightful criticism and our get-togethers that keep me sane.

  To all of my friends and family, for your patience, encouragement and support – you know who you are. But especially to Kalynda Bradley for being a fantastic early reader. To Anna Kosiorowska for assisting with the Polish and for showing me around your beautiful country: dzie¸kuje¸ serdecznie! To Rosie White and Mel Wilson for being the best cheerleaders a girl could wish for.And to Alex, Fi and Becky for the Prosecco, the laughs and for keeping me up-to-date with the police world.

  Arigatou gozaimasu to Andy Niewiarowski (Grammar Panda), for meticulously reviewing this book more than once; you’re the best. And for the lunches, endless cups of coffee and grammar advice.

  Thank you to my brother, Pete, for being my first teacher in storytelling. You taught me the limitless capability of the imagination when our toys would embark on epic adventures through time and space and glittering alien cities built in the sandpit.

  A special thank you to my twin sister, Alison. You believed in me long before I believed in myself. Thank you for dragging me to the City University London MA Open Day, even though I’d missed the closing date, and encouraging me to apply anyway. It changed everything. Thank you for reading this book numerous times and for loving it as much as I do. You will always be my ‘Ideal Reader’.

  And finally, thank you to my husband, Mike. You kept your promise, supporting me in my dreams, however crazy they seemed. I love you for your patience, calmness, humour and optimism. You make every day an adventure.

  About the Author

  Vicki Bradley splits her time between writing psychological suspense novels with being a DC with the Met Police. Before I Say I Do is her first novel and won the 2018 inaugural Write Here, Right Now open submissions competition run by Simon & Schuster UK, Darley Anderson Literary Agency and the Bradford Literature Festival.

  To find out more, visit her website or follow her on Twitter.

  www.vickibradleywriter.com

  @vbradleywriter

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  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2020

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Vicki Bradley, 2020

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  author of this work has been asserted in accordance with

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4711-8524-3

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-8525-0

  Audio ISBN: 978-1-4711-9155-8

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents

  are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales
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  is entirely coincidental.

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  Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY