Breathe

by Cari Hunter

  “Yes, around this time,” Rosie said, her tone matching the formality of Jem’s. “Do you want to come here?”

  “That might be better. Ferg will be home around eight.”

  “Okay.” Rosie hesitated. “Jem, take it easy tomorrow.”

  “I will.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I know.” Jem looked up at the rain flashing in white lines across the security light. “Be careful out there.”

  “You too,” Rosie said, and cut off the call.

  Chapter Twenty

  Nothing ever changed at Darnton Station. The tap over the kitchen sink was still dripping, there was still no loo paper in the ladies’ toilet, and chronic understaffing meant Jem was on the RRV again. She took its keys from the safe and dumped her helmet bag and high-vis jacket on its front seat. Unsure of the state of the roads, she had set off early that morning, and she had another half-hour to kill before she needed to sign on. She relocked the car and rested her hands on the car’s cold bonnet, listening to the loose panel flapping on the roof and a fox yapping on a nearby street. She had been nervous about work since waking, her stomach too unsettled to tolerate her mug of tea, and her fingers mucking up the buttons on her shirt as she tried to fasten it. While she had always subscribed to the “getting back on the horse that threw you” theory, she wondered whether she might have been better leaving the damn thing in the stable for the rest of the week, although fretting about her shift was at least taking her mind off what she might say to Rosie that evening.

  “Too bloody late to change anything now,” she said, and shoved herself off the RRV.

  The scent of frying bacon greeted her as she entered the main station, which was odd, given the absence of ambulances in the garage. She followed her nose regardless, taking a single step across the crew room threshold before Dougie swept her up in a bear hug.

  “Morning, flower,” he said as Bob wandered out of the kitchen brandishing a spatula. “We thought you might like some company, so we swapped onto the sixes.”

  “And brought breakfast,” Bob added.

  She kissed Dougie’s cheek. “Thank you. Have I ever told you that I love you both?”

  Bob blushed, and Dougie linked arms with her, ushering her to a table set with mismatched plates and mugs. Neighbouring Crofton Station had lost its stove after a near miss involving an absentminded crew, a forgotten pizza, and rather a lot of smoke alarms going off, but the management had never followed up on their threat to replace Darnton’s with microwaves. As Dougie brought in tea and toast, Bob filled Jem’s plate with bacon and eggs and tucked a paper towel into the neck of her shirt.

  “In case you’re as messy an eater as Dougie is,” he said.

  She smiled, her collywobbles kicked into touch by her first mouthful of smoky bacon. Almost everyone on the service complained about the job; about the late finishes, the overwhelming volume of calls, the morons and frequent fliers, the verbal and physical abuse, and the fleet of knackered vehicles, but those who stuck it out became a part of the best kind of family.

  “Did I miss anything?” she asked, slapping together an egg white and tomato sauce butty and laughing at Bob’s appalled reaction. She took a bite and spoke around it. “Hey, don’t knock it if you’ve never tried it.”

  “I never want to try it, and no, I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Broke-Back Brenda’s dead,” Dougie offered.

  Jem put down her sandwich. “Get out! Really?” Brenda had been one of their most persistent and unpleasant morphine chasers. “What got her in the end?”

  “She choked to death on an egg white and ketchup butty,” Bob said.

  Jem flicked a piece of crust at him. “Poor Brenda. I’ll sort of miss her. She had a very creative vocabulary.”

  “And a nice cat,” Dougie said.

  Bob raised his mug. “To Brenda and Mr. Bigglesworth.”

  Dougie grinned and knuckled Jem’s chin. “Bet you’re glad to be back, aren’t you?”

  They signed on together, checking through the updated road closures and flood warnings as the banks of yet another local river capitulated to the rain.

  “They’ll have to issue us with bloody scuba gear if this carries on,” Bob said. “Oh, here we go.” Their terminal began to bleep, and he read the job details aloud for Jem’s benefit. “Male, twenty-two. Car stalled in flood. Shivering and feels faint.”

  “Go save a life, boys,” Jem said and opened the garage door for them.

  * * *

  The daily briefing broke apart in dribs and drabs, a handful of officers sticking around to compare assignments or attempt swaps, while the majority went straight out to bagsy the cars least likely to smell of stale kebabs. Rosie stayed in her seat, her notepad blank aside from a doodle of a rowing boat with a flashing beacon on it. When the sarge had thrown the briefing open for questions, Smiffy had asked whether there were any plans to provide officers with Jet Skis. Everyone except his van was running solo, and a third of the shift hadn’t yet made it to the station.

  “You okay?” Kash said from somewhere behind her. He had started to leave with the crowd and then noticed she hadn’t moved.

  “Yeah.” Even to her own ears she sounded unconvincing.

  “Worried about meeting Jem?”

  “Yep,” she said without equivocating. She desperately wanted to sit down and speak to Jem properly, to have a chance to state her case and try to sort out whatever had gone awry between them. The three-in-the-morning terrors had got to her, though, planting an insidious little niggle that kept telling her Jem’s mind was made up and this would probably be the last time she would see her. No matter what she did, she couldn’t shake it off, and it was making her feel sick.

  Kash retook his seat. They had never had a very tactile partnership, but he put his hand on her arm. “How about I buy you a brew later?”

  “Definitely. Text me in a few hours and let me know where you’re at.”

  Left alone, she took out her phone, reminded of something else that had kept her tossing and turning through the early hours. Tahlia Mansoor’s photo was still open in her gallery, the phone’s screen smudged by her repeated efforts to enlarge or zoom in on the image, as if a clearer view of the school badge or the stitching on Tahlia’s blazer might somehow tell her where Tahlia was. As the screen timed out and locked itself, she pushed back her chair and headed for Major Crimes.

  She found Ray first, sitting in his customary spot by the open window and blowing vape smoke through the crack.

  “She’s in the loo,” he said, sending a sweet smell of cherries towards her. “You better get a wriggle on, though. She’s interviewing Galpin in ten.”

  Knowing how long Steph could take touching up her makeup, Rosie went straight into the ladies’ toilet. As predicted, Steph was leaning over the sink, reapplying mascara in the cleaner section of the mirror. She spotted Rosie immediately, but the twirl of her brush never faltered.

  “Admit it,” she said, setting the brush aside and uncapping a lipstick. “Your memories of this countertop are as fond as mine.”

  Rosie followed her gaze to the space beside the sink, but that night alone with Steph in the office might as well have been a lifetime ago, and the mention of it evoked the emotional equivalent of a shrug.

  “I need to speak to you about Tahlia Mansoor,” she said.

  Steph rolled her lips together, evening the spread of dark red. “What about her?”

  “I think there’s a possibility she might be able to identify Frank Galpin’s mother.” Rosie phrased the statement carefully, couching it in uncertainty in an attempt to placate Steph, but Steph slammed down her lipstick and turned to face her.

  “I’m not having this discussion again, Roz.”

  “Did you even bother to watch the video?” Rosie snapped, her mood as brittle as Steph’s. “That woman recognised Tahlia. You can see it clear as day in her reaction, which means there’s a chance they met face-to-face. We know what these arseholes a
re capable of, Steph. We need to find this kid before they do.”

  “Who do you mean by we?” Steph asked. “There is no we. It’s my team working this case, and we’ll be spending the day interviewing Frank Galpin and Adrian Peel, not chasing after a girl who may have no connection whatsoever to the investigation.” She threw her makeup into its pouch and yanked the zip closed. “Shouldn’t you be out with the rest of your mob, filling sandbags or something?”

  Rosie didn’t waste her breath on an answer. She walked out of the room and shut the door behind her.

  * * *

  The Entonox mouthpiece made an obscene farting sound as the child sucked on it, the noise and the hit of pain-relieving gas sending him into a fit of giggles.

  “You’re doing brilliantly,” Jem said, rechecking the splint around his fractured leg. “That’s it, pretend you’re sucking up a really thick milkshake. What’s your favourite flavour?”

  “Chicken nuggets and chips,” he said and took a puff that made him reel like a first-time drunk.

  “The ambulance is here,” his teacher told Jem. “And his mum is going straight to the hospital.”

  “Great, thanks.” Jem waved at the approaching crew, both of whom were wearing hooded coats and wellies. “How bad is it out there?” she asked, meeting them halfway. She had been waiting for backup for over an hour, and three of the school’s playing fields had been under water on her arrival.

  “If you’ve got a couple of oars, a rudder, and a tiller stashed in your car, you’ll be fine,” the paramedic said. “Half the Crofton crews are stranded at home, and Pud brought a lilo and floated it around the car park.”

  She laughed. “Outstanding. Right, let me tell you about our chap with the midshaft tib fib.”

  She was wading through the car park, cursing herself for not remembering to pack her own wellies, when her radio buzzed.

  “Kev wants to see you on station,” Ryan said. “Something about missing morphine.”

  “Crap,” she whispered, off the channel. That was the last thing she needed. She hadn’t spoken to a union rep, she hadn’t prepared anything in her defence, and, to be frank, she had enough on her plate today. She thumbed her talk button. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Don’t be rushing in this weather,” he said, obviously reading between the lines. “And if a cardiac arrest comes in, it’s yours.”

  In keeping with Jem’s general run of fortune, no emergency dire enough to warrant her attendance prevented her getting to Darnton, even with the roads snared up and traffic moving at a snail’s pace. Her boots squelched on the carpet as she walked toward Kev’s office, announcing her presence to all and sundry, and stopping her from hiding in the loo until Ryan managed to find her a job. She knocked on Kev’s door, listening for his customary “How do!” before she pushed it open.

  “Oh.” She hesitated on the threshold. She had assumed he would be with Baxter, but Amira was the only other person in the office. “Sorry. Do you want me to wait in the crew room?”

  “No, come on in.” Kev indicated the empty chair beside Amira. “How are you feeling?”

  Scared shitless, she thought, and then realised he was asking after her health.

  “Fine, thanks. I’m on a course of steroids, so I’m permanently starving, but I feel fine, thanks.” Giving up on coherence, she sank into the chair. “Do I need a union rep for this, Kev?”

  “No, love.” He gestured to Amira, who twiddled with her mobile phone and then passed it to Jem. It was strange seeing her without Caitlin. All trace of the cocksure bully she had been in Caitlin’s company had vanished, and she couldn’t look Jem in the eye.

  “I’m really sorry I didn’t tell anyone sooner,” she said. “But Cait can be—well, we’re supposed to be best mates, and you know what she can be like.”

  Jem frowned, still attempting to make head or tail of the proceedings. A WhatsApp message from Caitlin filled the phone’s screen, the text almost lost in a sea of horrified emoticons: Fuck fuck fuck. Help!

  “Scroll down,” Amira said, noting Jem’s confusion. “It’s all on there.”

  Jem did as instructed, reading through the next handful of messages. “Blimey. This explains a lot.”

  Amira shook her head. “She panicked, but that doesn’t excuse what any of us did.”

  According to the texts, Caitlin had started her first shift on the RRV by losing the three vials of morphine in question when she’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book: driving off with them on the car’s roof after getting a job in the middle of completing her vehicle checks. Shunning Amira’s advice to come clean and tell a manager, she had instead schemed with Baxter to shift the blame on to Jem.

  “Why the hell would Baxter agree to put himself in the middle of this?” Jem asked, but even as she hit the question mark, she had a light-bulb moment. “Ah. They’re a couple, aren’t they?”

  “They met on a training day, and they’ve been seeing each other for about six months,” Amira confirmed. “He didn’t know Cait had sent the texts, and she didn’t know I’d kept them. I only found out what she’d done after you’d been dragged into the office, and she swore me to secrecy. I don’t have any excuses, though. I should have told you or Kev.”

  Kev rustled the paperwork in front of him, looking even more worn out than usual. As a manager, he was happiest when the crews simply got on with things: started their shift on time, worked to the end of it without mucking anything up, and went home. While he’d had plenty of chats in his office with Jem, they had primarily been welfare checks after potentially traumatic jobs, rather than untangling her from some arse-backwards conspiracy.

  “I’ve spoken to Caitlin and Baxter this morning,” he said. “Baxter admitted to falsifying the entry in the controlled drugs book, and Caitlin owned up to everything else. They’ve both gone off sick with stress, and they’ll face a proper disciplinary hearing, if or when they come back.”

  “What a bloody mess,” Jem said. If it was up to her, they’d all shake hands and have done with it, but these things were never up to her.

  Kev crammed his papers into a file and lobbed the file in a drawer. “It is, but it’s my mess to sort, and it’s a load off your mind. Caitlin was supposed to be on the car tonight, so you’ll have no one relieving you.”

  Jem slapped her hands on the arms of her chair. “No worries,” she said. Water dripped from the cushion when she stood; she had been so stressed that she had forgotten to take her coat off. “Shit, sorry about that.”

  Somewhat overlooked in the corner, Amira sniffed and cleared her throat. Tears had ruined her mascara, trailing black lines down her cheeks. “What’ll happen to me, Kev?”

  Kev glanced at Jem, as if expecting her to turn her thumb up or down. She raised an eyebrow at him and then reached a decision in his stead. “Nowt,” she said. She didn’t need her pound of flesh. She was just relieved to have the issue resolved. “I’ll make a brew, and that’ll be the end of it. Is that all right with everyone?”

  Evidently satisfied with her verdict, Kev passed her his mug. “Stick a couple of sugars in mine, love,” he said, and ripped open a packet of Jammie Dodgers.

  * * *

  Even if Rosie had neglected all her local knowledge and followed her phone’s wonky satnav, she still wouldn’t have been able to justify passing the old mill en route to yet another sandbag distribution assignment. After holding a brief, one-sided debate upon the matter and concluding that her sarge probably had better things to do than track her whereabouts, she decided to take the risk. Fifteen minutes later, she turned onto Bennett Street and almost collided with a wheelie bin floating down the road. The river at the back of the houses was well on its way to providing the neighbourhood with a spontaneous spring clean, and most of the local residents had piled their belongings on the upper floors and taken refuge in the closest secondary school.

  The lack of parked cars made Rosie’s job easier, allowing her to circumnavigate the mill’s perimeter an
d confirm with near certainty that no suspicious vehicle was loitering in the vicinity. There were no dark-coloured SUVs with personalised plates or cars expensive enough to stick out like a sore thumb. The few vehicles she did pass were unoccupied scrap heap contenders, and at no point did she spot any signs of life beyond the security fence.

  She stopped by the hoarding she had sneaked through five, or was it six days ago? So much had happened since her run-in with the spliff-smoking, unicorn-discussing trio that it was hard to conceive less than a week had passed. She itched to go inside the mill, to search for any indication that Tahlia might have been using it as a refuge, but her unauthorised detour had already taken too long and she couldn’t justify entering on foot. Intent on providing a visual deterrent for anyone who might be lurking, biding their time for their own illicit reconnoitre, she drove around the block once more before reluctantly rejoining the main road and the slow crawl of early commuters attempting to get home.

  * * *

  Water sloshed over the top of Jem’s boots as she waded up the avenue, counting the house numbers and trying not to drop any of her kit into the lively flow tugging at her legs. She had abandoned the RRV two streets away and asked Ryan to put HART on standby for a possible extrication. HART, equipped for water rescue, was in high demand, so pre-emptively adding her call to their list seemed prudent.

  A high-pitched series of yells guided her to the right address, and she opened the front door after a perfunctory knock, walking into a living room ankle-deep in filthy water.

  “Hello? Ambulance,” she called into the murk. The power had gone out across the area over an hour ago.

  “Upstairs,” a woman replied. “Through the kitchen. Hurry!”

  The beam of Jem’s torch guided her between a corner sofa and a coffee table bedecked with sodden leather placemats. Pumpkins and onions glided by as she entered the kitchen, and she almost skidded on a submerged potato.