Payback

by R. C. Bridgestock

  Ruby paused and then a mischievous look lit her eyes. ‘Well, now. That depends. On average about five hundred a night. You?’ She took a dainty sip of her exquisite cocktail, without taking her eyes off Charley.

  Charley cleared her throat, hoping the shock on her face wouldn’t register with her new-found friend.

  ‘Hey look, I don’t fuck half of the men who pick me up and, hell, most of the time I get my dick sucked,’ she said, throwing her head back and the remainder of the cocktail down her neck.

  Charley didn’t know why it shocked her to hear Ruby say she had a dick, but it did.

  ‘So, straight men actually set out to pick up …? I mean, the stories of transgender women picking up unsuspecting straight guys and surprising them when they get intimate have become urban legends.’

  It was Ruby’s turn to scoff. She put her hand to her face, threw her head back once more and this time laughed out loud. ‘Baby, they absolutely love us! We get more business than you could ever dream of.’ She nudged Charley playfully with a bony elbow. ‘You ought to come out equipped with a dick,’ she said, with half a wink. ‘I’ll show you a good time.’

  Charley tried to hide her shock once again. ‘Do you have a pimp?’ she asked, spurred on by a genuine interest and a liking for Ruby.

  ‘Some do. Not many, though. We regulate ourselves on the whole. I mean, do I look like the type that’d give half my hard-earned cash away?’

  Charley shook her head. ‘I figured as much. Females have pimps for a variety of reasons, but mostly for protection, I guess.’

  ‘Exactly! Oh, and by the way – just for the record – those of us who are of sound mind would never pull a stunt the way legend would have you believe.’ She drew a pointed, vivid pink, painted nail across her throat. ‘I’d be dead by now. It’s a fact.’

  ‘You ever get arrested?’ Charley asked.

  Ruby frowned. ‘You sound like a cop and I should know. My dad was one.’ She looked over her shoulder at a good-looking, suited, dark-haired man who was walking towards them with a wide smile.

  ‘Now, that’s what I call eye-candy. He’s a salesman if ever I saw one, and he’s all yours,’ said Ruby, before being swept off by another. Her presence was required: payback for the cocktail.

  When they'd moved from the farm, the house Charley's parents had bought and which she had subsequently inherited was a Victorian terrace. At the back, yards formed a grid. Her bedroom looked across the street towards a small playground, the view so familiar, yet the emptiness surreal. She sighed as she watched a hooded youth race around the corner and launch himself over a wall into next door’s small front garden. A uniformed police officer, his helmet discarded, suddenly appeared, the scene reminiscent of a cop chase from the silent movies of a bygone age. Scratching his head, the officer stood in the middle of the road, looking and listening. Crouched and unmoving, the absconder peered through the hedge. Charley looked up to the sky as she heard a helicopter, low overhead, searching.

  ‘This is Detective Inspector Charley Mann.’ She spoke into her mobile phone, her eyes fixed on the runaway. ‘The person you’re looking for is hiding in the front garden of number 22, Beatrice Avenue.’ Her voice was monotone. Information dispatched, she laced her black leather brogues, picked up her satchel and descended the stairs. There was no need, or indeed desire, to put on any make-up for work. Charley knew who she was. She was confident in both herself and her ability in what, she was aware, was still deemed by some to be a man’s world.

  When she opened the front door, she was greeted by a raucous frenzy. The hooded prisoner shouted abuse at his captor. Handcuffed, he kicked out whilst being unceremoniously frog-marched to the marked police car. The driver acknowledged Charley with a nod of his head and the prisoner promptly spat at her feet. She calmly stepped sideways. She didn’t want to fight. She didn’t need to prove anything to him or to anyone else. Charley Mann knew that she could kill him with a punch if she wanted to.

  The sun was peeping over distant hills, creeping slowly into a pale blue sky as she travelled down from the well-defined terrace in the hillside. A freezing mist hovered and hung like a low cloud above the lowlands, before slowly evaporating to reveal the bow-shaped village basin of Marsden. It was early January, yet they hadn’t seen snow this year.

  ‘It’s too cold to snow,’ she’d heard the elders of the village say. Perhaps they were right, but winter was far from over according to the weather forecasters.

  Slowly and carefully, she traversed the steep, narrow road, hugged by dry-stone walls, to the west of the mill and terminating in the main street. The view changed with the seasons and never ceased to take her breath away. She’d dreamed often of this mesmerising landscape – her childhood playground.

  Once on the road that ran through the village, it felt a coat warmer. She opened her car window and breathed deeply, allowing the crisp, fresh air to fill her lungs. Charley caught a glimpse of her ice-blue eyes in her rear-view mirror. Spread out on the back seat was her riding gear. The pain the sight generated was as acute now as it had been when Kristine had rung to inform her of her police horse’s death.

  ‘The operator of the drone flying in restricted airspace hasn’t yet come forward. CCTV footage shows Eddie looking spooked in the paddock,’ Kristine had said. ‘He vaulted over a fence and collided with a wooden post. There was nothing anyone could do…’

  Tears clouded Charley’s vision at the memory. If only she hadn’t gone away… Would Eddie still be waiting for her this morning when she got to work? Would the outcome of the investigation have been different? She frowned. What still puzzled her about the incident was that Eddie was used to the police helicopter taking off and landing nearby and had been trained to cope with loud noises. The incident had eventually been written off as an accident and, although drone parts had been found nearby days later, it didn’t take them much further. Nor had the police appeals brought about a satisfying result. Over the years Charley had been away, nothing had happened to change her view: always trust animals more than people.

  The view ahead was blocked by a truck waiting its turn to go under the railway bridge. It brought her back to the present. She was transfixed by the muddy waters pouring from the hillside and running, as if with a purpose, into the blackened mouth of the tunnel below. People walked past as the traffic waited. A hot and bothered woman with a child stopped on the pavement edge. The little girl, whose hand the woman held tightly, jumped mischievously off the kerb and instantly the woman swung her back by her scrawny arm. Her eyes were crinkled up with humour. She gave Charley a cheeky smile and poked out her tongue. Charley chuckled to herself, noting her buttons didn’t match with the buttonholes on her coat and her bobble hat was about to pop off her head. She waved them across in front of her car with a sweep of her hand and they disappeared under the wooden entrance to the church which, it was rumoured, had been carved by one of her ancestors.

  This place … Nothing changed. That could have been her twenty years ago … Memories of her childhood flooded back: the sepia pictures on Granny’s mantel; Grandpa standing at that very spot on the Green, at the opposite side of the road. She smiled and looked around for the telegraph pole she knew to be next to the church, where he had rested an elbow, such was the height of the snow drifts that year. Her eyes sought the memorial garden where his team had leant on the shafts of several large axes, shirt sleeves rolled up, tin mugs in dirty hands, a break from chopping away at the icicles hung from ceiling to railway track, the steam train stationary, waiting patiently for them to clear its path.

  ‘Tha’s n’er seen proper snow, lass,’ he’d say, year upon year, as he sat her down on his chair by the fire to pull off her Wellington boots. On their return from herding the cattle she’d snuggle into a rainbow-coloured crocheted blanket made from unpicked, damaged or outgrown woollen garments, which her granny had warmed by the coal fire. Instinctively she yawned, as she recalled the comforting feeling that had flowed through her body.


  The spell was broken by the roar of the engine belonging to the vehicle in front. Charley adjusted her sitting position and shifted her gear stick. Her ancestors hadn’t been quitters and neither was she – they’d made sure of that in her upbringing.

  Harsh as the weather had been in winter on the farm, she had fond childhood memories of building snowmen and making igloos, and having snowball fights with Danny from the neighbouring farm, rolling around in the snow until her clothes were soaking wet. Grandpa was right, she hadn’t experienced the depth of snow he had, nor did she want to. She preferred the warmth of the summer sun. Short as the season could be in the North, it was one that turned the moorland she knew into a wonderful welcoming terrain for picnicking, tree swings, jumping the stones on the waterfall in the hillside and swimming in the brooks.

  From the railway bridge, her twenty-minute journey took her past the old pasture fields and the wilder moorland, grazed by sheep, cattle and horses, and into the town of Huddersfield, where Peel Street police station headquarters was located, some seven miles from Marsden.

  It was seven thirty a.m. when Charley arrived at Peel Street – the twenty-nine-year old’s first day as head of CID.

  She took a moment to stand before the great glass doors and look above them to the Force crest. She took a deep breath, drew her shoulders back and stepped forward. The action prompted the doors to glide silently open and, before she knew it, she was presenting herself at the front desk. Her smile was wide.

  ‘How’s it going, Marty, my old fruitcake?’ she asked the front desk sergeant who appeared as if by magic from behind the screen.

  ‘By ’eck lass,’ he said, showing a parade of uneven, yellowing teeth. ‘It seems like only yesterday you were stood right there in yer T-shirt and shorts after a nine-mile run and a kick-boxing class, to start yer first shift here as a rookie.’ He raised an eyebrow and gave a slight nod of his head. ‘Got tongues wagging that did, all right.’ His bright eyes clouded over. ‘And then, o’ course, you had to go and upset a few of ’em upstairs, according to the rumour squad. Where’ve yer bin? I heard on the grapevine you were seconded on a secret squirrel job; police corruption jobby, weren’t it?’

  ‘Aye, they sent me down to the big smoke, but like Dad always told me, there’s always a positive. I learnt a lot in the city and now I’m back; older and a lot wiser, that’s for sure.’

  Marty’s face took on a serious expression and he beckoned her closer. ‘Do something for old Marty, will yer?’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Keep yer head down, yer mouth shut and watch yer back this time, eh?’

  Charley winked at the old-timer. ‘I’m not here to be liked; I’m here to do a job. And no matter what it takes, I’m going to do it.’

  Marty shook his head and gave a little sigh. ‘Well, I’ve gotta say, lass, the place hasn’t been the same without you. I, for one, am glad to have you back, and I know our Winnie will be, too. You’ll be pleased to see we’ve a new custody suite. If I recall rightly, when I worked in the cells there was never an empty one on Charley Mann’s shift.’

  At the press of a button, Marty Webb automatically unlocked the internal door. Charley slapped the steel plate with the flat of her hand when the buzzer sounded its unlocking. The adrenalin rush that soared through her body as she stepped over the threshold was huge, though it soon turned to apprehension as the door banged shut behind her with some finality; she was now officially on duty.

  ‘She might look like a petite blonde, but I wouldn’t want to be on the end of her right hook.’ Marty nodded knowingly at his civilian colleague as he stepped into the back office. At the sound of his voice the young woman swivelled her chair to face him and he stepped over her feet to sit down at his desk. ‘Her dad, Jack, he could have been a professional boxer if he hadn’t been needed to run the family farm. He wanted a boy. Sad really.’ He stopped and appeared thoughtful. A whimsical smile crossed his lips. ‘By gum…’ he paused for effect. ‘I pulled him out o’ many a scrap in my time – a bit of a lad was our Jack in his younger days.’ His smile turned to a more serious look. ‘Taught the lass everything he knew about the boxing, though.’

  Marie-France looked amused.

  Marty guffawed, tilting his head. ‘Born weighing nigh on twelve pounds! Charley went straight into our little ’un’s hand-me-downs and our Kristine were six months old at the time. Inseparable them two were, growing up. What with them having the horses in common, they’re still best o’ friends to this day.’ Marty reached for his coffee cup and put it to his lips, but instead of taking a drink he sat back in his chair and cradled it in his hands as it rested on his round stomach. ‘Charley worked as a bouncer in the pubs and clubs in Huddersfield before she joined up.’

  ‘She’s always worked around ’ere then?’ asked Marie-France, her accent slipping into her adopted Yorkshire tongue.

  ‘Kirklees, Calderdale as a detective constable. When she was promoted to detective sergeant, they shipped her off to work on an enquiry into police corruption in another county.’

  Marie-France smiled and offered Marty a ginger biscuit. ‘Bet she’s glad to be back.’

  He took a bite. ‘Aye, especially as it’s on promotion.’ Marty dunked the remainder of his biscuit into his cup and chewed thoughtfully, pushing back his chair. ‘It won’t be easy for her, coming home.’ He frowned. ‘There were things going on around the time she left that we weren’t privy to, but I heard she was in a bad way.’

  ‘And she’s not been back since?’

  ‘Briefly, for her dad’s funeral. Then Ada, her mum, died suddenly – of a broken heart, they said.’

  ‘Do you think people really do die from a broken heart?’

  ‘Dunno. I guess they must. Or maybe it’s the shock that kills ’em. I think our Kristine thought she’d come home when Eddie died. But maybe she couldn’t…’

  Marie-France’s eyes were wide open. ‘Mince alors, pas son frère, aussi?’

  ‘No, her horse … Eddie was her police horse. Our Kristine was looking after him at the time. Spooked to death, they say he was.’ A huge sigh escaped from his lips as he rose from his chair to go to the aid of the person ringing the front-counter bell.

  ‘I guess she needs to face all the bad stuff, before she can move on,’ Marty shuddered, involuntarily. ‘Poor kid.’

  Charley skipped up the steps, two at a time. She stood on the first landing for several seconds, gawking at the amazing view beyond the historic town buildings immediately in front of her, to the green rolling hills and valleys beyond. Suddenly, she remembered why she was there and her heart leapt with pure joy. This was the best feeling; to be chosen as the top detective in the place of her birth.

  ‘Thank you, God,’ she said, looking up at the bright blue sky through the long, high window. The winter sun passed through, and its warmth on her face felt like a welcome. She took a moment to survey her domain through the glass pane. As her eyes scanned the rooftops, the roads and the countryside, she recalled numerous traumatic scenes. There were people out there who wore extreme violence on their sleeves, but she had no desire to do any other job and she was ready for the challenge. Every day she’d worked in the city, she’d vowed to learn something new, something that would help her police her own town more efficiently and effectively. Now, as the senior investigating officer, she was at the cutting edge of major enquiries. All her life, Charley had pushed boundaries to their limit. If someone said she couldn’t, it was like throwing down a gauntlet, a red rag to a bull, making her even more determined to succeed, especially where others had failed.

  ‘Always try to look for the positive in everything,’ had been her dad’s words when she left, and she had continued to live by those words, hard as it had been at times. Last time she’d stood here she had been a broken woman – but now she was changed, her strength regained, and she was ready to face whatever lay ahead.

  As she walked through the windowless corridors where the management resided, she noticed very quickly that there
had been little change at Peel Street police station in her absence. The same names were on the locked doors. The smaller office housed the Divisional Commander’s secretary, Becky, her old friend, who was deep in conversation on the telephone, in the cubbyhole. Approximately fifteen-feet long, six-feet high and about six-feet wide, the cubbyhole was in the centre of the arched room. It had been used as a stationery cupboard before becoming an office for a blind typist, Ruth Hollingshead. Her Labrador, Flora – no more than a youngster when Charley had left – lay by Ruth’s side, surveying the newcomer at the door who had very obviously not been forgotten, judging by the vigorous wagging of her tail.

  Walking through the CID office as the boss felt surreal. A couple of uniformed officers were standing at the water dispenser, so deep in conversation that they didn’t turn their heads or even acknowledge her presence. She felt slightly disappointed that no one was there to greet her. Sure-footed, she continued across the large open space, marvelling at the new desks with their chairs neatly stored underneath, and with only upright computer screens on top, just waiting for the command to bring them to life. Their owners, however, were nowhere to be seen and Charley could only deduce that they were out interviewing, or – as good detectives should be – catching criminals; or were they merely avoiding the new boss?

  She followed the ultra-modern storage cabinets that extended beyond the desks and lined the wall to her office. Then a large red arrow on the wall caught her eye. It pointed to the sign saying ‘NIGHT REPORT’, where details of the night’s activities were left for the day team by uniform patrol.

  ‘Man in cells,’ she read. ‘Lock-up by traffic patrols overnight. Driver arrested on suspicion of theft of a black Mercedes saloon. Car seized and presently situated in the back yard.’