The Last First Time

by Andrea Bramhall

  “I never told anyone who the father of my baby was because I knew my da would kill you for having touched me. But our little girl was born on the 8th of July 1965. She weighed just 5 pounds and 12 ounces. Oh, she was a skinny little thing. But long. She had such long legs and perfect tiny little hands and feet. It was a marvel, George. I sat there the whole night just looking at her. I memorised every tiny, perfect fingernail, the way her skin smelled so sweet. I even tried to count every hair on her head, but there was just too much of it. We made a beautiful baby, George. Beautiful.”

  The page shook in Kate’s hands. “Want me to read a bit?” Gina asked.

  Kate shook her head and offered her a teary smile. “Perhaps this was the mistake I made. Some of the other girls didn’t hold their babies before the nuns took them away. But I knew I had to hold mine. I had to hold her before I let her go, because I wasn’t just holding our baby that night, George. I was holding you too. I didn’t cry. I don’t think I had any tears left by then. I’d spent so many months there, crying while I scrubbed sheets. There’s been rather a lot in the media over the past few years about those places, and I have to admit that I was rather luckier than others seem to have been. Yes, we were made to work hard, but we weren’t abused, as many reports said. We were shamed. But then we all knew we had done something to be ashamed of. In my case, several things. Most of all, I was ashamed of the way I’d treated you.”

  “Poor kid,” Stella said as she tugged the blanket up her shoulders. “She’d done nothing wrong, but they made all those young women believe they had.”

  “Like you said, it was a different time,” Kate pointed out.

  “Doesn’t make it any better, Kate.” She sniffed. “Go on and finish it.”

  Kate nodded and carried on. “Our baby was adopted by an English couple, as so many children were back then. I called her Alison. I don’t know if they kept that name, but that’s what I called her. My little Alison O’Shea. I tried to find her. I went to the church to try to get the records of who adopted her, but I was told I couldn’t have them without my father or husband’s permission. Well, that was several years ago. It’s probably changed by now, but then I got wondering about what kind of life she’s had. If she’s happy, would she even want to know me? If she’s not happy, would she be angry at me letting her go into that life? Would she even know she was adopted? Many folks back then didn’t talk about those things. There were so many questions, George. So many doubts and fears. I was paralysed by them. I’d spent so long regretting and questioning the choices I made back then that I didn’t have the confidence in myself to make any more.” Kate flipped the page over and carried on. “Maybe one day I will. Maybe, when I finally have the courage to find you, we can be friends and laugh at the fears of a stupid old woman. Who knows, maybe we can find her together. If you can ever forgive me. Yours sincerely, Pat.”

  All three of them had tears on their cheeks. Stella had her eyes closed again, but it didn’t seem to slow her tears. “God, I told you. EastEnders.”

  Kate sniggered. “Nah. If it was, then they’d have been brother and sister to cap it all off.”

  “Fair point,” Stella acknowledged. “And I agree. There is nothing in there that could possibly affect the investigation. Give it to the man it was intended for.”

  “But we’re tampering with evidence,” Kate said, clearly still uneasy. Gina could see it in her face.

  “Then photocopy it, give him the copy, and submit the original into evidence, if it’ll make you feel any better.”

  Kate nodded. “That’s the way I was leaning.”

  “IRA, hey?” Stella shook her head against the pillow. “Well, she really didn’t have much choice, did she? And you say you’ve found George Boyne?”

  Kate nodded. “Pretty sure it’s him.”

  “That was fast. Did you call in a favour?”

  “No. All Google.”

  “You’re joking?”

  “Wish I was. It’s been a long time since I’ve done a civ search.” She whistled. “It might actually have been quicker than going through official channels.”

  “Bloody scary.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So when are you going to go and see him?” Stella smiled.

  Gina was fascinated to watch the two of them bounce off each other. They understood each other in a way she never thought she could understand Kate. Their minds worked so similarly.

  Kate shook her head. “Don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Course it is. How else are you going to give him his letter?”

  “No, I think we should write to him first. Check if he is the right one and if he wants to know. If he doesn’t and we just turn up on his doorstep, we could be opening a whole can of worms.”

  “Since when did you start doing sensitive?”

  “Since I got me a girlfriend.”

  Stella smiled. “Fair point.” She turned her head towards Gina. “And what do you think of the letter-writing plan?”

  Gina shrugged. “If that’s what Kate thinks is for the best.” Personally, she just wanted to jump in the car, drive to Cambridge, and knock on his door. But she could see how that might cause problems.

  “Besides, I don’t have time right now to drive over to Cambridge,” Kate said.

  “Why not?” Stella looked at her.

  Kate grinned evilly. “I’m under orders not to leave your side until we know you’re going to be okay, because you’re “very important”.” She curled her fingers in the air.

  Stella frowned and opened her eyes a slit. “What are you on about?”

  Gina chuckled. “You might as well ’fess up, Stella. He made it really obvious.”

  Stella’s frown deepened. “What am I supposed to be confessing to?”

  “You and Timmons.” Gina winked at her.

  “What?” Stella sat bolt upright in her bed and grabbed at her head as she came to an upright position. “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. Don’t make me do shit like that,” she complained and lay back down gingerly. “Now what the hell are you talking about? Me and Timmons? There is no me and Timmons.”

  Kate grinned. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Then our DI has me sitting here with you because he’s got one hell of a crush on you, my friend.”

  “Piss off.”

  “Nope. I can’t. I’m under orders.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “As a heart attack.”

  Stella’s eyes were wide, her mouth was slack, and her cheeks looked a little more flushed than before. “Bollocks.”

  “Yup, I agree. I think that’s the line he’s thinking down, Sarge.”

  Gina watched as Stella swallowed, one hand over her stomach, the other resting on her forehead.

  “Well, I suppose he’s not a bad-looking bloke.”

  Kate laughed.

  “But I don’t do other cops.”

  “Why not?” Gina asked.

  “There’s only room for one ego like that in a relationship.”

  Kate sniggered.

  “Isn’t there, Gina?” Stella grinned wickedly.

  Gina grinned and blew Kate a kiss. “Certainly is.”

  “Hey.” Kate planted her hands on her hips. “I think I’ve just been insulted.”

  Chapter 8

  Kate rolled over and slapped her hand at the infernal buzzing on her bedside table. It couldn’t be eight o’clock already. Blessedly, the vibrating stopped. She glanced at the clock. The big red number mocked her sleep-deprived brain: 5:55 a.m. She’d finally managed to crawl into bed somewhere around four by the time she’d felt comfortable leaving Stella at the hospital, then had gotten Sammy and Gina settled in the spare room. She’d needed some time to let herself calm down and decompress a little.

  “I set the alarm for eight.” Her voice was hoarse as it scratched its way out of her throat, and the buzzing started again. “For fuck’s sake,” she cursed as she picked up her phone, pulled the charging cable ou
t, and held it to her ear. “Yeah?” she growled, flopping back against her pillows and rubbing at her eyes as she listened.

  “Good morning to you too, sunshine.” Timmons sounded gruff, and Kate wondered briefly if he’d managed any sleep at all. Probably not.

  “Sir.”

  “Did you get the statements and evidence?”

  Kate nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see her. “Yeah. I took the evidence bags down to the crime lab and signed them over to the duty officer. I have the statements recorded.”

  “Good. Then get your arse out of bed and get in here. Full team briefing in twenty.”

  “Twenty minutes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sir, it takes thirty to get there.” She pushed the curtain aside and saw that more snow had fallen overnight. “Plus it’s icy.”

  “Better get a move on, then.”

  Kate groaned and shoved the covers off her legs. “Where?” She pulled open the wardrobe, grabbed a pair of jeans and a fleece and tossed them onto the bed.

  “Base incident room. Standing room only. We’ve got bodies coming in from all over, from both inside and outside of the county.”

  She grabbed clean underwear from the drawers and quickly changed while she was still on the phone, bra and jumper in her hands. “Right. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “Drive safe.” He didn’t say goodbye. Just shut off the connection.

  Kate shook her head and finished dressing before she ran down the stairs as quickly and quietly as she could. After she scribbled a note for Gina and stuck it on the fridge with a big magnet, she let Merlin—the blue merle Border collie she’d adopted after her owner had been found murdered a couple of months ago—into the back garden to do her business.

  She had her jacket on one shoulder, car keys in one hand, and an apple in the other as she let Merlin back in and pulled the back door closed behind her. She didn’t remember being told there was a briefing last night when she spoke to Timmons and updated him on Stella’s condition. But if she were a hundred per cent honest, at that point she was so exhausted she wasn’t sure she could remember her own name. Two hours sleep later, she already knew today was gonna be a bitch.

  The roads were surprisingly clear—the gritters had obviously been working overtime—and the thirty-minute journey was shaved a bit—or a lot—by Kate’s admittedly heavy-footed driving skills. Speed limits were more like targets, after all. Besides, Kate was too busy trying to anticipate what would happen at the briefing. And, just as importantly, who would be there.

  Bodies from all over the county. She already knew Clare was there. Did that mean Melissa would be too? Would she have to deal with the two of them together, or rather at the same time, since force gossip had confirmed that they had long since split up after the affair that had cost Kate and Melissa their relationship?

  In the wake of everything that had happened yesterday…why was that the issue she couldn’t get out of her head? Kate felt like a scratched record going over and over the same question, the same personal riddle, that she wouldn’t have the answer to until it was right in front of her. She couldn’t prepare herself. It was simply going to happen, or it wouldn’t. Until then, she was just stuck on everything that had happened between the three of them. The pain of betrayal, the hurt of her shattered heart and—more fragile even—her shattered trust.

  Kate still wasn’t sure who she was angrier with—Melissa, for cheating on their relationship, or Clare and the betrayal of a friendship. No, it had been more than a friendship. Clare had been her mentor, her confidante, her greatest supporter, and her strongest ally. She’d been more like a sister than a friend. And Kate couldn’t get past the thought that she’d be seeing her again soon. Maybe both of them.

  Kate supposed it was a kind of coping strategy. One she’d seen in victims over the years. When the bad stuff was just too big, too awful, your mind focused on the little, pathetic, seemingly inconsequential details to try and get you through. She’d seen women scrubbing floors after being told their child had died in a car accident, because they simply couldn’t face the prospect of their baby not coming home. She’d seen blokes pick up their keys and go to work upon learning their wife was dead, just focusing on the mundane, the everyday, the superficial, because everything else was just…too much.

  So this was her scratched-record moment. Her fixation.

  “I’d rather be thinking about Gina and Sammy, if it’s all the same to you, brain,” she muttered under her breath as she parked her car, flipped her hood over her head, and ran from her car to the door of King’s Lynn police station. Late for the briefing…but only just.

  She snuck into the incident room, shouldering her way through until she could see. At the front of the room, Timmons slouched against the wall behind him. His usual scruffy appearance had dropped to a new low. The jacket and tie of his well-worn brown suit had been discarded. Large sweat stains marred the creased shirt he wore, as did a greasy-looking splotch. Remnants of some hastily grabbed sustenance, no doubt. But it was the figure next to him she was staring at.

  Chief Inspector Clare Green, in all her crisply starched, uniformed glory. Short, dark hair framed an almost elfin-looking face with small dark-rimmed glasses perched on her nose. There was more grey at the temples than Kate remembered, but it had been a while. Kate shook her head a little and focussed on what Clare was saying.

  “The images from the CCTV footage we got off the server yesterday have been cleaned up and run through every database we’ve got.” She pinned two photos to the board behind her. “Confirmed IDs as Nadia Ahmed and Saba Ayeshydi.”

  “Confirmed by?” a man’s voice in the crowd asked.

  “Yes, confirmed by their passports.”

  “They’re both British nationals?” It was the same questioning voice that Kate didn’t recognise.

  “Yup.”

  “Bollocks.”

  “Yup.”

  “How old?”

  “Ahmed was seventeen, and Ayeshydi was nineteen. No priors and they’re not on any watch list that we know of, or, should I say, none that we have access to. We might get more info on that later.” Clare took a deep breath. “Right now, all we know for sure is that these two girls walked into a shop almost two weeks before Christmas and blew themselves and the shop to pieces, taking with them seventeen innocent people and injuring twenty-five more. The tech lab has been over the fragments of the bomb they’ve found already, and it is clear—crystal fucking clear, people—that these were very sophisticated weapons. Now, while I wouldn’t swear that there is no way on God’s green earth that either of these two girls could have built them, it is highly unlikely. And it’s fucking impossible that they didn’t have help.”

  A murmur ran around the room.

  “Which means they have links somewhere. We’re now looking for anything on the cell they must have been involved with. We need to know who made those bombs, where they made them, and whether they have made any more.” She nodded, reinforcing her words. “These weapons were sophisticated, and they had built-in fail-safes. The detonators were linked, so if one girl tried to pull out, the other would detonate her vest anyway. This is not a first-time bomb maker, lads and lasses. No bomb maker creating this kind of fail-safe is doing so for the first time and achieving this level of success.”

  “Is that why there were two bombers? Just to ensure this fail-safe?” a faceless voice in the crowd asked.

  “That’s our best guess at the moment,” Clare said.

  “Why did they target that particular shop? There were busier places on the High Street if they were going for maximum impact.” Another voice from the crowd, a woman this time.

  “We don’t know yet. There must have been some reason. We have authority to search the homes of each girl. Maybe we’ll find some information there.”

  “Are the CSIs in there already?” the woman asked again.

  “No, the CSIs are all tied up on the High Street and recovering bodies at
the moment. Detective Inspector Timmons and I are assigning teams of investigators to each property.”

  Timmons handed her a sheet of paper, and Kate saw Clare’s eyebrow quirk before she cleared her throat and addressed them all again. “Team for Saba Ayeshydi’s home: Detective Tom Brothers, Detective Jimmy Powers from Lynn—team up with Sergeant Martin Sanderson and Constable Roger Manners from Norwich.” She held up a piece of paper, and a guy Kate recognised as Manners took it from her with a quick nod.

  “Team for Nadia Ahmed’s house: Detective Sergeant Kate Brannon, Detective Gareth Collier, from Lynn, with Sergeant Vinny Jackson and Constable Melissa Brown from Norwich.” She found Kate in the audience. The look on her face was unreadable.

  But Kate now knew what that quirked eyebrow was about.

  Not only was Kate going to see Melissa, she was going to have to fucking work with her. Fantastic.

  Clare quickly handed out more assignments once Vinny collected the address from her and made his way across the room to Kate. His smile was wide, but his eyes looked as haunted as everyone else’s in the room.

  He clasped her hand and pulled her into a quick hug, slapping her on the back. “It’s good to see your ugly mug again, Kate. How’s life in the sticks?”

  “Ah, you know. Sliding along nicely. You?”

  “Same old, same old.”

  “How’s the wife?”

  “Great. Yeah, just great. She’s married to someone else now.”

  Bollocks. “Sorry to hear that, mate.”

  “Nah, it’s for the best. As long as the kids don’t start calling ’im Dad, it’s all good, you know?”

  She nodded and kept her mouth shut.

  “Listen, I know things didn’t end all that well with you and Mel, but—”

  Kate waved a hand to quiet him. “It’s fine. I can be professional, Vinny. You know me.”

  He nodded as Clare called for everyone’s attention again. “That’s it for now, folks. Crack on. When we know more, you’ll know more.”

  Small groups began to form within the room and then quickly exited to their various tasks. Kate waited for Gareth and Mel to join them.