Alias

by Cari Hunter

  “Priti called me on the way over,” he says. “She’s been pecking my damn head since yesterday. Did you listen to these messages?”

  He shows me the landline phone with its flashing answer-machine icon. I take the handset into the kitchen, and the sound of Priti’s voice, steeped in concern, is like a salve on my frazzled nerves.

  “Phone her,” he tells me. “You’ve got thirteen months to catch up on.”

  * * *

  Getting up close and personal with some bloke’s size fourteens doesn’t seem to have exacerbated the issues with my memory. If anything, being in the flat, surrounded by my belongings, is akin to having a dedicated prompter, someone standing in the wings and gently reminding me of the time I bought those socks with the sheep on them, or of the evening Jo and I almost blew up the microwave making popcorn to go with an Alien double bill. I don’t have any memories of Priti being here, but I find her photograph hidden in my bedside cabinet, and it’s less of a subtle nudge and more of a sledgehammer.

  “She transferred to DV about eight months back,” Wallace says, looking at the photo over my shoulder. Priti and I are arm in arm, wearing matching kits and grubby from a football match. “And she ditched that bellend she was seeing—James?”

  “Josh,” I say and then frown as if second-guessing myself. Wallace is obviously well tuned in to the MMP grapevine, and the last thing I need is him spreading the word that I’m on the mend. “Or it could’ve been James.”

  “Either way, he was a twerp.” He taps the photo. “Your hair looks miles better now. When was this taken?”

  I turn the image to check the date, though I could easily reel off the specifics. Priti and I met at Sedgely Park on the first day of our training course, class of 2009. We worked out of Longsight for five years, until we decided we’d done our time in uniform and applied for positions on the MCT. I’m not surprised by her move to Domestic Violence; she’d never really settled on Major Crimes.

  “Seven…wait, no, eight years,” I tell Wallace. “Did we play hockey or something?”

  “Football,” he says in the undertone I’m coming to think of as his “no sudden moves or revelations” voice. “You had a cracking left foot.”

  I’ve probably still got one, but he seems content to write me off, so I continue to nudge him in that direction. He’s on the verge of either patting my head or hugging me when I’m rescued by a knock on the door.

  “Hello? Al? You there?” Priti calls out from the hallway, and I meet her halfway, stumbling into her arms like an overwrought drunk as my carefully constructed defences collapse en masse.

  “Hey, hey, it’s okay, you’re all right.”

  She continues to murmur while I sob against her neck, a week’s worth of hurt and confusion and fear coming out in wet blasts of snot and saliva. She’s smaller than I am, and we resort to sitting on the floor, shoulder to shoulder, our fingers entwined. She pulls her sleeve over her free hand and uses it to clean my face.

  “Alis Clarke,” she says, “what have you been doing to yourself?” Her accent is far more Bolton than Kerala, and there’s no suggestion of rebuke or censure in her question. She probably doesn’t want an answer, not right now at any rate.

  “I fucked everything up,” I whisper.

  “Mmhm.” She sets her palm on my cheek, bringing our faces close together. “I know you, my darling, and I’m sure there was more to it than that. Now come and pack a bag. I’m taking you home.”

  I nod but don’t move until she tugs my hand. Then I kiss her forehead, overwhelmed by the simple trust she’s just shown in me. I can’t tell her how right she is, that there’s a hell of a lot more behind what’s happened, but I love her for not thinking the worst of me.

  * * *

  When Priti said “home” she meant mine: a ground-floor, one-bedroom flat in a large detached Edwardian.

  “Bloody hell. How much rent do I pay?” I ask. The street is quiet and tree-lined, and I know from googling on Ceinwen’s phone that property in Chorlton doesn’t come cheap.

  “You don’t rent this, darling. You own it.” Priti laughs as my jaw actually drops. “It was a complete shithole when you bought it. You charmed the pants off the vendor and got it for a song. And I do mean that literally.”

  I follow her into a sunny entrance hall with a hardwood floor. “Which part?”

  “Both parts.” She laughs again and drops the front door key into my hand. She’s always had a spare. “Did you find yours?”

  “No.” Wallace and I searched everywhere, but none of my keys were in the Gorton flat. Changing the locks to this property will be number one on the to-do list I’m yet to write.

  “Are you hungry?” she asks. “I’m starving. Fortunately I brought provisions.” She hoists two large bags aloft and bustles past me, making a beeline for the kitchen.

  “Need any help?” I call above the clang of pots.

  “No, thanks! You can’t cook for shit.”

  “Oh.” This revelation deflates me. After seven days of hospital food, I’d been looking forward to meals that weren’t mass-produced and pre-packaged. With hindsight, burning the soup was probably an omen, but there were extenuating circumstances at the time. For a moment, listening to her vigorous chopping, I entertain the possibility that my skill set might be different now, like those people who wake from comas speaking fluent German, but I can’t conjure up a single recipe idea, nor the inclination to remedy that, so I reconcile myself to a future of microwave dinners and salad, and go to find my bedroom.

  My first attempt takes me into a cubbyhole cluttered with a shoe rack and cleaning bits and bobs. My bedroom is the next door along, a south-facing room with a bay window whose sill is so wide you could curl up on it and read a book. Several of the multicoloured cushions scattered along the ledge have distinct backside-shaped dips in them. I seem to have furnished the rest of the room with a job lot from IKEA. An oversized double bed dominates the space, its pale wooden frame a close match to the freestanding wardrobe and a bookshelf that’s straining at the seams. Three of the walls are a soft sage green, with the fourth papered in a swirling floral pattern. I peer closer at the design, sure that my choice of forget-me-nots wasn’t intended to be ironic.

  I haven’t brought much from the other flat, just enough clothes to cover the work boots I stuffed into the corner of the bag, plus all of the case files. Wallace was on the phone when I told him I was taking those. He made a “be my guest” gesture and continued to argue with his wife. I should have time to read through them before the SMIU come sniffing around, but for the moment I shove the holdall under the bed and grab a pair of pyjamas.

  The scent of onions and garlic is wafting down the hallway as I run a bath hot enough to fill the bathroom with steam. Keeping my casted arm elevated, I sink beneath a layer of bubbles so thick they cascade over the side. The warmth soothes the spasms in my ribs and the newer, more intense pain around my midriff. My head bobs, too heavy for my neck. I let my chin drop onto my chest and doze, until Priti wakes me by building a tower of froth on my nose.

  “Hey.” I blink and go cross-eyed looking at the bubbles. She blows them away and taps my forehead with a sponge.

  “Tea’s nearly done.” She dips the sponge and eases it around the bruising on my face. “Do you need help with anything?”

  I deliberate and then raise one hairy leg from the depths. “How good a friend are you?”

  “The best you’ve ever had,” she says, and flips the top off the shaving gel.

  * * *

  Our early dinner is the antithesis of mass-produced and pre-packaged. Lapsing into an easy routine, Priti and I sit together on the sofa, our lap-trays laden with plates of biryani and warm parathas. I shovel in forkfuls of chicken and rice, trying at first to isolate flavours and then giving up and simply enjoying the mix. Half a bottle of wine sends my head into a pleasant whirl, and once the plates are cleared, I snuggle beneath the blanket Priti throws over us and watch her thumbing through an ol
d photo album.

  “Here we go,” she says, setting the open album on my knee. “That’s your mum and dad, with Martin.”

  I slip the picture from its sleeve and hold it closer. It’s a summer picnic shot, with the green swell of the moors in the background and everyone barefoot from paddling in the river. The Clarke family traits have divided along gender lines: Martin is a trimmer, blonder version of my dad, while I’ve inherited my mum’s darker colouring and the way her nose ruffles when she smiles. I took this photo myself, fumbling with the focus and getting nowty at Martin for pulling stupid faces.

  “How long ago did she die?” I ask.

  “It was before I met you,” Priti says. “Twelve years, maybe? You were temping, factory work mostly, but you took a lot of time off to care for her.”

  “Twelve years? Jesus.” My mum’s death feels so recent that the sorrow of it follows me around like a tangible thing, yet I’m probably at the stage where I only visit her grave at Christmas and birthdays.

  I flick through the rest of the album, tracking the passage of 1997: snow thick on the ground in February; an awkward teenage birthday party where only two people appear to have turned up; my dad beaming in the straw by a new calf, his hands and forearms covered with gore; prize-giving at Hawdale Secondary School. From annotations on the backs of the Polaroids, I learn that my mum and dad are called Lisa and Harry and that we lived on Hawclough Farm, nestled in the Saddleworth moors. I look hollow-eyed and miserable in many of the shots, as if I’m already aware I’m a square peg in a round hole.

  In 1999, another girl starts to appear in the photos with me. We’re about the same age, and I obviously adore her. We sit side by side at a pub lunch, two baby dykes clasping hands beneath the table, surrounded by an oblivious family.

  “That’s Shelley,” Priti says, nudging closer to rest her chin on my shoulder. “Your first love.”

  For the next few pages the sullen teenage me disappears, replaced by a girl with sparkling eyes, bright purple hair, and a mischievous grin. The album stops abruptly midway through October, leaving Halloween, my sixteenth birthday, and Christmas undocumented.

  Priti uncurls my fingers from the empty pages and closes the album.

  “Your dad caught you at it in one of the barns,” she says, an instant before the memory hits me. “He dragged Shelley back to her parents and wouldn’t let you out of the house for weeks. You missed a load of school.”

  I’d missed even more when I started bunking off, too ashamed and too fucked up to want to sit in a classroom full of whispered gossip and snide glances. I scraped grades good enough for sixth form and picked a college in Stalybridge, two bus rides away.

  “You hated your mum and dad for ages,” Priti tells me quietly. “You moved to a shared dosshouse in Manchester, and you only went back to Hawclough when your mum was diagnosed.”

  “What are we like now? Me and dad and Martin?” It’s an honest enquiry. I have faint impressions of them but little that I can class as reliable.

  “Better. Martin was too busy on the farm to really get involved, and your dad stopped behaving like such a twat once he realised there were worse things in life than having a gay daughter.”

  I nod. I’d suspected as much, but I’m relieved to have it confirmed. “Did he remarry?”

  “No. He signed the farm over to Martin and went to live in Tenerife. He bought an apartment there after your mum died. Martin’s married with three kids. You have a few photos of them on your phone.”

  “Three? God.” I lean my head back on the sofa, resigned to my role as the absent aunt, thirteen months undercover having severed my already brittle family ties. I bet I’m the copper who volunteers to work Christmas and New Year.

  The album lands with a thud as Priti drops it out of sight by the side of the sofa.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, and I know she’s not referring to my trip down Half-Memory Lane. “Any of it?”

  “Worst-case scenario, I might get done for death by dangerous,” I say. “There’s a DS at Colwyn Bay who’s dealing with that side of it.” I want to tell her more about Pryce, about how much I trust Pryce to do the right thing in terms of the investigation and any charges she may bring, but Priti cuts in.

  “Have you spoken to a lawyer?”

  “No.”

  “Been questioned under caution?”

  “No.” I squeeze her fingers. “Not yet.”

  “Well, you get a bloody good lawyer first. You hear me?”

  I look her in the eye, glad to have someone fighting my corner. “I hear you.”

  “Did you take your case files from the flat?” she asks, and then gives me a serene smile. “What? You going to ‘no comment’ me?”

  “No comment.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Fuck off.” She mimics my position: head back, feet on the coffee table, legs crossed at the ankles. “Copy what you can and then volunteer them to the SMIU. That’ll keep them occupied for a while, and it’s the first thing they’ll ask for now that your laptop’s done a bunk.”

  “Aye.” I keep my response noncommittal, unsure what she might have worked out, and silently starting to panic.

  “I mean it, Al.” She doesn’t shout, not with our faces almost touching, but her voice rises. “These arseholes don’t muck around, and you can’t hope to defend yourself if you don’t have a clue what your assignment was.”

  “Oh,” I say. “No, no, of course not.”

  “This isn’t without precedent,” she says. She’s on a roll now and doesn’t notice when I gulp her glass of juice to regulate my breathing. “Look at that bloke from the Met, the one who went UC for years and had all those affairs. If you and this Jolanta lady really were in a relationship, perhaps it was a part of your assignment.”

  “Perhaps.” I put the glass down, happy to explore this tangent with her. “It’s certainly worth looking into.”

  “It’d be bloody typical of our lot as well: set something like this up and then leave you high and dry when it all goes to shit.” She huffs, her eyes narrowing. “You won’t find it in those files, either. They wouldn’t be able to make it official or anything.”

  This grabs my attention for a completely different reason, and she hits the jackpot on my behalf as she continues.

  “You’ll have kept a copy, though,” she says. “You’re not stupid. You’ll have everything on a disc or a memory stick somewhere. If I were you, that’s the first thing I’d be looking for.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Have you got everything you need?” Priti asks. Like a mother hen on overdrive, she’s doled out painkillers and tucked me into bed by nine.

  “Yes, thanks. I think I’m sorted.” I pat the empty half of the mattress. “You sure you don’t want to sleep in here? We can top and tail.”

  She helps herself to another pillow and heads for the door. “The sofa is fine. I have to be up at six, and you’re a wriggler.”

  “Right.” I study her in the lamplight, the eco-friendly bulb casting shadows across her dark skin.

  “We kissed once,” she says, adding “mind reader” to her impressive list of talents. “We were drunk, and I’d never kissed a girl, so you volunteered for the purposes of”—she bends her fingers into air quotes—“expanding my painfully narrow horizons.”

  I snort a laugh. I would give my eyeteeth to remember that night. “And how did that work out?”

  “Not too shabby. The lack of stubble rash was a real bonus. Unfortunately, it would seem that I lack even the slightest inclination towards bisexuality.”

  “Priti Dewan.” I clamp my hand to my heart. “You wound me.”

  She comes over to plant a kiss on my forehead. “Go to sleep, you daft sod. I’m in the next room if you need anything.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’d do the same for me,” she says. “Light on or off?”

  “On for a while, I think.”

  She narrows her eyes and passes me the pile of case files I’
ve set on my bedside table. “Don’t stay up too late.”

  “I won’t. I’ll be good.”

  Withholding comment, she closes my door behind her. A few seconds later I hear the murmur of the television, and I wait until the creak of the sofa tells me she’s settled down. I check the obvious places first, tiptoeing from the bed to remove the clothes from my drawers. I unfold and refold everything, shaking out knickers, bras, and socks over the mattress, and then run my fingers around each empty space, testing the wood for loose panels or hidey-holes. One-handed and still tipsy, I take almost an hour to search the first cabinet, and I discover nothing but a penchant for novelty socks and mismatched underwear.

  “Bugger it all to damnation!”

  I fling the last pair of socks over my shoulder and slump on the bed, scowling at my next target, a wardrobe with a rail full of smart shirts for office days and a lower level devoted to casual. Mustering the energy to crack on, I try to think like the pre-crash me, the one who hopefully had the gumption to store incriminating evidence on some device other than her MMP-issue laptop. Would I really have been stupid enough to hide it here, when any police officer with a contact in human resources could find out my address? Lateral thinking reintroduces the issue of my missing house keys, and I walk slowly around the room, scrutinising its surfaces and shelves for signs of disturbance. Thirteen months’ worth of dust works as well as any of SOCO’s fancy science, and I confidently conclude no one’s been in my bedroom.

  Having thrown doubt on the necessity of searching my wardrobe, I decide to postpone the task until morning. Too hyper to sleep, I wriggle beneath the quilt and pull the uppermost case file onto my lap.

  The optimistic and possibly geeky side of me is hoping to unearth a convenient précis summarising the basics, alongside a dramatis personae and a well-inked map. Instead, a handful of grainy surveillance shots flutter onto the bedding, while the remainder of the file comprises pages of alphabetised expenses. I arrange the photos in no particular order, creating a montage of men getting into and out of vehicles, most of them taken in the same car park beside a large mill bearing “Hamer & Sons” signage. The men are all white, sted-head types who look like they eat bricks for breakfast, and I’m not surprised when the names on the reverse reveal four of them to be members of the Hamer dynasty.