by LJ Ross
He’d even grown to like the school run, something most parents dreaded each day. He supposed that, when your daily grind involved standing over dead bodies or chasing down low-lifes, being stuck in a bit of afternoon traffic didn’t seem half so bad.
The playground was another matter entirely.
Although he’d heard rumours of other fathers doing pick-ups and drop-offs, they must have been a rare breed, since Phillips often found himself the lone male in a crowd of females, all of whom seemed to look alike. With the odd exception, they were all similarly dressed and appeared to frequent the same hairdresser, judging by their identical shades of blonde. It made him smile to think of McKenzie standing where he was now; with her vibrant hair and general air of capability, she’d stand out like a rare, exotic flower.
Which, he acknowledged, was exactly what she was.
Lost in pleasant thoughts of his wife, Phillips failed to notice the approaching footsteps until they were almost upon him.
“Detective Sergeant Phillips?”
He jumped, taken unawares by the arrival of the school’s headmistress.
“Aye, you’re looking at him,” he said, cheerfully. “Mrs Wilson, isn’t it?”
She nodded, reluctantly shaking his calloused hand.
“I wonder if we might have a word,” she said.
“What about?”
“I’m afraid there’s been an incident,” she said, in a tone that might have been used to hand down judgments in the Old Bailey.
“Aye, well, you’re bound to get the odd bit of rough and tumble, even at a nice school like this,” he said. “What’s happened, then? One of the boys pushed my girl?”
If possible, Mrs Wilson’s face grew even more stern.
“Not quite,” she said. ”Please, come into my office, where we can discuss the matter in private.”
Phillips trailed after her, feeling like a dog about to be served his last meal as several pairs of eyes watched his progress across the tarmac.
* * *
It has been a long time since Phillips had found himself on the wrong side of a headmistress—although, in his day, they hadn’t been averse to a spot of corporal punishment, regardless of whether the law had made it illegal to crack the cane. The memory of it stung his palms, and he clasped them together to try to rid himself of the sensation.
“What’s happened, then?” he asked. “Has somebody hurt her?”
“Actually, Mr Phillips, it’s the other way around. I am afraid it was Samantha who struck one of the other girls in the playground earlier this afternoon.”
She paused, giving him another stern look, to drive the point home.
“Naturally, I don’t need to tell you, this is hardly the kind of behaviour we expect from the children who attend this school.”
Phillips almost remarked that, surely, the same could be said of any school, but decided to gloss over the point.
“What did this other lass do?” he asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well, this other lass must have said or done something to provoke Samantha, so I’m asking what it was. Samantha knows not to hurt anybody, except in self-defence, so there must have been something to set her off.”
The headmistress’s lips flattened into a hard, disapproving line.
“There was no provocation whatsoever,” she said, with some alacrity. “I must say, Mr Phillips, I’m surprised that someone in your profession would look for excuses—”
Phillips leaned back in the visitor’s chair and linked his fingers over his paunch.
“Excuses, no. Justification, maybe,” he said, mildly. “So, I ask you again, Mrs Wilson. What were the circumstances?”
The woman folded her arms, by now extremely put out to find he had no intention of making any instant or grovelling apologies until the full facts were known. In her experience, parents were only too eager to accept her final word, unwilling to challenge her authority.
That was the natural order of things, and she’d come to expect it.
In fact, she’d come to relish it.
“I understand the girls were playing together nicely during break time, until Samantha launched an attack on one of them, completely out of the blue,” she snapped.
“Which girl?” he asked. “Were there any adult witnesses?”
She was starting to feel uncomfortable at his cross-questioning, especially when she hadn’t thought to ask about other witnesses herself.
“There must surely have been a teacher on duty in the playground,” he prodded. “Why don’t we ask them in, and get the full story?”
Wilson turned a slow shade of red.
“Ah, we do have an…an attendant on duty,” she said quickly. “Unfortunately, the area where this incident occurred was around the side of the climbing frame, where it’s hard to see—”
Phillips’ brows lowered, ominously.
“You mean to say, no adult saw the incident?”
“Well, no, but—”
“But?”
“One of the other girls saw the whole thing,” she said.
“And, is she friends with Samantha or this other child?” Phillips enquired.
“She’s…well, yes, she’s the sister of the girl who was hurt.”
He gave her a long look, and she shuffled uncomfortably in her seat.
“Samantha does not deny she hit the girl,” Wilson said, with an attempt to regain her former authority. “I’ll go and get her now, and have her explain the whole thing.”
“Both girls, please.”
She paused by the door.
“The other girl has already gone home,” she said. “Samantha has been in detention for most of the afternoon—”
Phillips turned hot, then cold with anger.
“You punished my girl and let this other one off, scot-free, before you knew the full facts?”
“I used my discretion,” Wilson said, swallowing nervously. “Samantha was the one to lash out—”
“Where is she?” he demanded.
* * *
When the headmistress returned with Samantha in tow, the girl’s face was a picture of misery.
Phillips rose from his chair and curved a protective arm around her shoulders.
“Come and have a seat, and let’s get to the bottom of this.”
“Mrs Wilson probably already told you what happened,” Samantha mumbled. “What else is there to say?”
Mrs Wilson let out a triumphant snort, which Phillips found highly inappropriate.
“See?” she said. “It’s exactly as I told you—”
Phillips silenced her with a look, then turned back to his daughter.
“It’s not like you to hurt anybody, Samantha,” he said gently. “Are you sure nothing else happened? You can tell me anything.”
The girl raised her head to look at him, and his eye was immediately drawn to a slight swelling on her bottom lip.
“What happened to your lip?” he asked.
In his peripheral vision, he saw the headmistress shuffle uneasily in her chair to get a better look.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Precisely my question, Mrs Wilson,” he said. “Go on Samantha, tell us what happened.”
Her eyes strayed across the desk towards a woman she found cold and unapproachable, then back to the man who had always been kind to her, and whom she had begun to think of as a father.
Phillips read the indecision on her face and was sorry for it. He’d hoped that he and McKenzie had given Samantha sufficient love and security to build trust between them, but then, he couldn’t step inside the child’s mind to fully understand the conflict within.
“I didn’t want to do it,” she said eventually. “But I had to make her stop.”
“Make who stop?”
Samantha cast another dubious glance towards her headmistress, but drew strength from Phillips’ steady gaze.
“She’s called Francesca, and it happens every playtime. She trips
me up, or pushes me, then says it was an accident—but I know it wasn’t. When she thinks nobody else can hear, she calls me a dirty gypsy and says nobody likes me.”
“Go on,” Philips said, while his heart quietly broke.
Samantha was the orphaned child of a travelling circus community; a sensitive, intelligent girl who’d learned to live by her wits. She hadn’t been given any formal education, and starting school behind everyone else had been a daunting prospect. She’d demonstrated courage and resilience, making friends and learning quickly—so quickly, it hadn’t taken her long to catch up with the rest of them.
Perhaps that was the problem—maybe she’d seemed too happy, or too smart, and some little brat had decided to bring her down a peg or two, to make themselves feel better.
Phillips could understand human frailty, and had never considered himself infallible. But to think that anybody could be so cruel as to mock Samantha’s heritage, or to laugh at her loss, was more than he was prepared to tolerate.
Add in the pushes and shoves, and he was ready to break some heads, himself.
“How long has this been going on?” he asked. “Have you told any of the teachers?”
“I tried—”
“I must interject,” Mrs Wilson said. “I realise, Mr Phillips, that parenting is somewhat new to you”—she favoured him with a condescending smile—”however, it’s very common for children who know they are likely to be disciplined for bad behaviour, to try to find a way to wriggle off the hook. They make up all kinds of tall tales, painting themselves as the victim. Now, Samantha, I’d like you to think very carefully before you answer the question I’m about to ask you. Do you understand?”
Samantha nodded.
“Are you sure you’re telling us the full truth?”
Samantha looked up at Phillips with big, tearful eyes, and shook her head slowly. But, before Mrs Wilson could utter another word of self-congratulation, she said the words no headmistress wanted to hear.
“I haven’t told you the full truth yet,” she said. “That’s because Francesca’s mum is one of the teachers here, and she says nobody will ever believe me, not since all of the other teachers are friends with her mum.”
Phillips thought how sad it was that children must learn at so young an age how corrupt the world could be.
Luckily, they could also learn that there were those willing to fight to make it better.
“How did you hurt your lip?” he asked again.
“Francesca barrelled into me when we were all playing tag. She made it look like an accident and said sorry really loudly, so everyone would hear and think she really was sorry, but she had a nasty look on her face. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
Phillips knew exactly what she meant. He’d seen similar looks on plenty of faces in his time.
“Did you tell anyone about it?”
“I knew nobody would believe me, so I didn’t bother to say anything. Everybody thinks she’s Miss Perfect, so what’s the point?”
She gave a dejected shrug, and fell silent again.
“Truth is its own reward,” Phillips said with a smile. “Hopefully, you’ll have taught her a good lesson today, but, you know, some folks are a bit slow on the uptake. You be sure to teach this Francesca a thing or two about good manners, if she ever happens to accidentally barrel into you again, alright?
Samantha gave him a shy smile.
“Thanks, Frank,” she whispered.
“We’ll be going home now, Mrs Wilson,” he told the headmistress. “I trust I have your assurance that, from now on, the playground area will be properly supervised, so that my daughter doesn’t have to fend off any further bullying behaviour.”
“I—”
He cut her off.
“I know that a woman in your profession wouldn’t look to make any excuses for what’s been allowed to happen here, today,” he added, and the woman had the grace to look abashed. “Howay lass, I think this calls for some chicken nuggets from the takeaway.”
“Really?”
He waited until they were outside in the school corridor before brushing a gentle knuckle over her cheek.
“Dinner of champs,” he said, with a wink.
“Frank?”
“Yes?”
“Francesca said something else, too. She said…she said you weren’t my real mum and dad, and that…that…you wouldn’t want to keep me, because nobody would want a gypsy in their house. Is that why Mu—Denise was crying last night?”
Phillips dropped down onto his haunches in front of her, so she could see his face and read the truth of what he was about to tell her.
“Sam, first of all, let’s never use that word ‘gypsy’ again,” he said. “It has a pejorative—”
“What does ‘pejorative’ mean?” she interrupted him.
“Oh…it means, when somebody uses a word like ‘gypsy’ in a negative way, to hurt somebody else.”
“Like, when somebody says a person from Sunderland is a ‘Mackem’, and they say it in a bad way?”
They were getting into dangerous territory now, Phillips realised. Generations-old football rivalry between Newcastle and Sunderland had given rise to all manner of nicknames, which might have started out innocently enough but had since taken on some very unflattering connotations.
“Absolutely right,” he said, and told himself to be more circumspect, in future. “That’s a good example.”
“Okay,” she nodded. “So, we won’t say ‘gypsy’ or ‘Mackem’.”
He nodded.
“The next thing is even more important,” he told her. “You might have heard Denise crying last night, and that’s because Anna was hurt in the explosion at Durham Cathedral, yesterday.”
“People were talking about it, today,” she said.
“Yes. We were worried because she needed to go to hospital, and we weren’t sure whether things would come right, in the end. We didn’t tell you, because we didn’t want you to worry, too, but I can see that’s made you worry about other things, hasn’t it?”
Samantha’s eyes filled, and she nodded.
“Is Anna going to be okay?” she whispered. “And, the baby?”
Phillips smiled.
“Yes, I think so,” he said. “She’s spending another night in hospital, but Ryan’s hoping to take her back home, tomorrow.”
“Okay,” she said. “Can I make her a card?”
“Aye, love. That would be nice.” He thought of all he wanted to say, right there in the empty school corridor. “You’re a treasure, Samantha. Anybody would be proud to have you as their little girl, but they can’t, because me and Denise…well, we want you to be ours, if that’s still alright with you?”
Her lip wobbled, and a tear spilled over as she nodded her head.
“Yes, please.”
His arms drew her in for a warm, bear-like hug, and her voice was muffled against his shoulder.
“Frank?”
“Mm hmm?”
“Can I start calling you ‘dad’?”
Phillips swallowed, his voice heavy with emotion.
“Anytime you like,” he said, coming to his feet again. “And you can always tell us, if any little bugg—If any little girl or boy is bothering you. I’ll teach you some nifty new moves to have in reserve, just in case.”
As they set off down the corridor, he felt her small hand slip into his own and smiled at something Ryan had said the day before. Since he was now the proud father of a little girl, he’d have to start thinking about getting a shotgun of his own, one of these days.
CHAPTER 15
As the afternoon began to stretch into early evening, Ryan left Anna in the care of his parents and the hospital staff, and set off for Police Headquarters.
There was work to be done.
Conversation died as he stepped back into CID, and he decided now was as good a time as any to rip off the proverbial bandage.
“I—ah—I want to thank you all for your well wishes, ye
sterday,” he said. “I’m pleased to say my wife and child have come through the worst, and we have reason to be optimistic she’ll make a full recovery.”
There was palpable relief all round, possibly more so because their leader had returned to something resembling his former self. However, Ryan knew there was one person to whom he owed an apology, and it couldn’t wait any longer.
He found the Chief Constable in the break room, stirring a sachet of sweetener into a freshly brewed cup of tea.
“Do you have a moment, ma’am?”
She looked up briefly, then stirred her tea with more force than was strictly necessary.
“Well, if it isn’t the prodigal policeman,” she said. “You know, Ryan, we were all sorry to hear what happened to Anna. That doesn’t give you the right to ignore protocols that exist for very good reason. Nor does it give you the right to ignore a senior officer for six hours on the trot—”
“I apologise unreservedly,” he said, and her mouth fell open in shock. “My actions were both rude and unacceptable, and, although it’s fair to say I was consumed with worry at the time, that isn’t any excuse. It won’t happen again, ma’am. You have my word.”
Morrison took a bolstering sip of tea, finding herself momentarily at a loss.
“I’m glad you’ve come to your senses,” she said. “As for you continuing to run the investigation into the robbery, that’s obviously out of the question—”
“Respectfully, I disagree,” he said.
“I knew it was too good to last,” Morrison said, and took another sip of tea to hide her smile. “Ryan, you and I are both aware that, since Anna was caught up in the incident, that precludes you having any involvement without your judgment being compromised.”
“Has my judgment ever really been compromised?” he asked, rhetorically, for they both knew he had a forensic ability to remain clearheaded, even in the most challenging of circumstances.
