by Jay Stringer
“You know what? You could just do what I said with the credit card, then walk out like you’ve paid for it.”
I heard him walking now, breathing hard.
“Cal, you already carrying the telly?”
“Aye, I’m talking to you on the bluethingy headset.”
“So you’re walking round Asda with a 46 inch telly, two boxes of tin foil, and a microphone on the side of your head? But you’re whispering so that you don’t attract attention?
“Uh, yeah. You gonna come pick me up then?”
“No. Cal, I’m telling you, don’t do this.”
“Look, it’s fine. Like I said, I’ve worked it out, yeah? Even if this tin foil don’t work –and of course it will because it’s my idea- I can outrun the old dude and be away.”
“Cal-“
“Here we go.”
I heard him breathing hard and stepping up his pace. I heard somebody shouting, and then I heard deet deet deet. Seconds later I heard a loud crash and the sound of something heavy smashing. I hung up and leaned back on the sofa. I lit the joint I’d rolled earlier and switched over to the sports channel. An hour later I got a call from the boss. He wanted to know why I’d sent his son to steal a poxy telly from Asda, and told me to pick him up from the police station.
First Steps
The Gypsy drums his hands on the steering wheel, nervous energy playing out as the traffic slows to a stop. We’re stuck in a tailback, and I guess that should mean more time for small talk, but he doesn’t seem to like that sort of thing.
The Gypsy.
I know I shouldn’t think of him like that, but I can’t help it. It’s what everyone calls him behind his back. Well, that’s the polite version of what everyone calls him behind his back.
I think back to how my friends laughed when I told them I was going for dinner with Eoin Miller, asking if I was an equal opportunities dater now, or just after a bit of rough. And I sit here thinking, why did I laugh along?
The silence stretches out. I look across at him, but he doesn’t look at me. His eyes are fixed ahead, peering into the traffic, trying to see what’s causing the hold up. He’s not comfortable with the silence, but in some strange way that is comforting in itself. I don’t know, I guess I like that he’s not trying to impress me. There’s no bravado, no mask. It’s just him and me in a car, and neither one of us is pretending this bit of the date is going well.
We inch forward a few feet, and as we turn the corner heading to the traffic lights we can see the problem now. In the churchyard, blue lights, uniforms, and people in white overalls. That means there’s a dead body. Miller pulls the wheel hard to the right, mounting the curb to pull out of the line of traffic then parking the car there. As we climb out, a WPC is coming over to tell us to move, when she spots me. It’s Sarah Barford, a friend of mine. Never quite slim but never quite fat, she maintains that gray area in between, and likes to live vicariously through tales of my sex life while flirting with men that she never follows through on. She looks me up and down, clocking my dress and then locking eyes with me to avoid acknowledging Miller.
“What you got?” I ask.
She shrugs, “Just a homeless guy dropped dead, nobody.”
“Who’s in charge?” Miller asks, forcing Sarah to look at him.
She shrugs again, knowing her answer won’t be popular, “Leek.”
“Seriously?”
***
“Seriously?” Sarah looked over her Starbucks coffee cup at me and raised her eyebrow, but her voice was more interested than shocked, “The gyppo?”
It was three weeks before, we’d caught the same shift and managed to steal away thirty minutes for a lunch break. Sarah had a Panini and coffee, I had half a Panini and a latte. Neither of us would be writing rave reviews.
“Don’t call him that, it’s racist.”
“How is that racist?”
“I was talking to him about it the other day, after the sergeants exam, and he was saying it’s an ethnic slur.”
“Ooh, look at you, at the exam. Were you passing each other love notes?”
I shrugged. I’d known it would be a mistake bringing this up with her. She had a heart of gold, but shit for brains, and she couldn’t break free of her parents programming.
“I think he’s interesting,” I said, “And a little cute. Plus, he’s the only guy who doesn’t look at me like a leg of lamb.”
“Nice image.”
I stuck my tongue out, “You know what I mean.”
She tipped the cup back to get at the dregs, making a slight slurping noise as the coffee went down. Then she caught herself and stopped, and wiped away liquid from the corner of her mouth, smiling at me while checking if I’d noticed.
“So when’s you date?”
It was not a date.
It was not a date.
Okay, a little bit of a date.
“Few weeks, probably. He’s pulled a load of backshifts for football duty, and I’ve got this court case I need to prepare for. You know, that robbery thing? Looks like I’m going to be called as a witness.”
She stayed silent for a minute, then smiled again, “The gyppo, huh? I never. I thought for sure that you and Terry Becker were going to-”
“Sarah, he’s married.”
“So?”
***
“So? What you got?”
Miller steps over to DS Terry Becker, a member of CID stood by the police tape. Becker’s one of the good guys. He doesn’t treat Miller like shit, and he only occasionally looks at my tits when he talks to me. There was a brief moment, around the last Christmas party, when if I’d been any more drunk and he’d been any less of a man we might have made a mistake under the blinking fairy lights, but he’d fingered his wedding band and backed off.
He points down at a bush cordoned off by police tape. The lights from the police cars reflect off the tape and cast dark neon patches onto the wall of the church. There’s a soundtrack of radio speak and sirens in the air. Down beneath the bush, half in the churchyard and half on the pavement, are a pair of legs. Cold and pale, the skin already has the marbled effect of death. The rest of the body is out of sight beneath the leaves.
"Oi Gyp."
If Eoin Miller is insulted, he doesn’t show it. He just straightens up and turns to face the person calling out. The voice belongs to DI Leek. He’s sweaty and round, and stuffed into a cheap Asda suit. His accent is full on Black Country, the beginning and ends of his words are heavy enough to sink a boat. He hates Miller, but then, it seems like everyone on the force does.
Except me.
(Well, maybe me.)
Miller reaches to the other great divide for his revenge, football rivalry, “What’s wrong, you stripy cunt?”
In the great rule book of how not to address a senior officer, I’m fairly sure Miller’s words would be on the first page, with a big red circle around them. We’re not needed here, but that didn’t stop Miller from pulling up and sticking his nose in. I’m hanging back, I don’t want to get involved. It’s been hard enough building credibility, without people spreading rumors about this. Leek sees me though and his posture changes. He’s instantly sucking in about ten pounds of gut and tightening his jaw into some sort of tough guy smile.
“Hey Laura,” He says, “What brings you-“
That’s the time it takes for him to do the calculations and for me to drop down a peg. He turns again to glare at Miller, to blame him for being with me.
“I see.” Leek says, “right. Well I’m sure the two of you have things to be getting on with.”
He turns back to kneel over the body, dismissing us, but Miller steps in closer, and I reach out to try and stop him.
“What you got there?” He asks.
Leek turns back, his face flushed. Terry Becker steps between Miller and Leek, easing things without making a fuss about it, “Nothing Eoin. Just a dead homeless guy. You two carry on,” he smiles at me and checks out my dress, “we’ve got this.
”
But Miller steps closer in again and I follow.
The corpse is looking cold and dirty. His clothes, ripped and covered in mud, are sodden from rain. His feet are bare, and his face, when one of the SOCO team in white overalls pulls back the bush, hasn’t had a shave in a couple of days. There’s a strong smell of alcohol and urine coming off him.
“What’s the hold up?” I ask, “There’s a crowd here that don’t need to be seeing you standing round a dead body.”
Leek turns on me now. I’ve officially gone from hot stuff to whore.
“Oh, so the WPC is going to give the okay for us to move the body, eh? It’s okay with you if we just go ahead and search his pockets, maybe put him in the boot and drive away?”
I step back and I must look hurt, because Miller’s blood is up now.
“You fat gavver fuck. Just because you’re CID doesn’t mean I won’t wipe the floor with your gorjer arse.”
Becker is smiling, off to the side, like he’s enjoying this too much to break it up, so now I’m stepping between Leek and Miller. Again I seem to be the only one thinking about the spectators.
“Come on guys, no need to do this in front of them. Lets just leave, Eoin, eh?”
“DI Leek is happy that this is open and shut, but we’re the first on the scene.” Becker calms everyone down with his friendly tone. “We’re waiting for the coroner to call it, and then the undertakers can take him away.”
“Just a bum.” Leek shrugs as he says it. “Maybe you’re related to him, eh?”
Miller either doesn’t hear what Leek says, or ignores it. He kneels in closer to the body. I look it over again, trying to spot what’s was nagging at me and shouting at Miller. There’s nothing out of place; he has no possessions to have been stolen. His clothes are worthless. He doesn’t even have shoes to steal.
Radio squawk, bursts of static.
Another siren approaching, this one an ambulance.
Way too late to do any good.
Miller keeps making to touch the corpse, and a uniform keeps coughing and stepping in the way. It takes me a minute to realise that he’s doing it on purpose, having fun at the expense of those throwing themselves in the way. Sacrificing themselves for red tape.
Miller then stands and starts looking at the gathered crowd, mainly old women from the bingo hall across the road and a few drunks from the pub, wanting a piece of whatever’s going on. He turns to me and winks.
“Right, DI Leek, we’ll get out of your hair.” He salutes Leek in a way that gets the fat mans blood boiling even more, “Leave you to your dead guy.”
He puts his hand gently on my back and leads us toward the car, and I realise that I like the feeling. I like being round this guy, even if he is a bit of a dick. Before he gets in, he calls Becker over and whispers something in his ear, then they smile at each other and Miller gets back into the drivers seat.
“What did you say?”
“Mmmm?” He pretends to be distracted, not to hear, but really I think he’s stalling for thinking time and hopes I’ll play along.
“To Becker there. What did you say?”
***
“What did you say?”
“There wasn’t really anything I could,” Miller shrugged, then reached for his drink, “I mean, what could I do, offer him some butter?”
After the exam every one of us had headed across the road to the bar, working through our nerves and fears in the form of ale and cheap mixers. The group had been evenly divided between those who pretended to have the right answers and those who pretended not to care. By early evening the crowd had split off into groups, leading missions to takeaways, restaurants or strip clubs. Only two of us stayed behind, Eoin Miller and myself. I was feeing the drink, and I thought he was too, but it was hard to tell what went on behind his eyes.
“You’re making it up.”
“I wish I were. Then I wouldn’t have the scene stuck in my head. Leek ball deep when I walked in on them, hanging on for dear life, wheezing away like a pig with asthma.”
“And that’s why he hates you?”
“Yup.”
“Did he ask you to keep it quiet?”
“Yup.”
“And did you?”
“Hell no.”
I laughed and accidentally snorted some alcohol up my nose. Miller saw me do it, but pretended not to have noticed. I saw him giving me the sideways look, the one I’d seen a hundred times since high school.
Here it comes.
“So why are you a cop?”
That wasn’t exactly the come on I’d been expecting. Maybe it wasn’t going to come. I didn’t know if I was relieved or disappointed.
“I could say the same to you. A Romani cop? What are you trying to prove?”
He raised his glass in a toast as if to say, good question. For a second I thought he was shaping to open up, to tell me what was going on behind his dark eyes. And I realised just how much I wanted to find out.
Then he finally got to it, “I mean it though. Why? You’ve got a degree, you’re smart, you don’t take shit, and you’re really cute. Why waste yourself on the force?”
Even though I’d been expecting the moment, I still felt my cheeks flush slightly, and then we were alone In the universe for a second, and my next move was the only thing that mattered. Even more, I felt myself shaping to open up, and just for a second I thought I was going to tell him why I was on the force.
I hid behind a familiar move, “You think I’m cute?”
“I think you should let me take you out to dinner.”
I pretended to think about it for a while, “What’s the worst that could happen?”
***
“So a dead body on our first date, right? What are the odds?”
Miller doesn’t answer. He ignored my question about Becker, too. We sit in silence for a minute as we head down the road, and I know we’re both thinking about what might happen when we get to the other end. I’m open to stopping off somewhere for more drinks, but I want him to ask.
“Come on. What did you say to Becker?”
“What did you think of the body?”
“Shame, something like that. Wonder if he’s got a family.”
Miller just smiles, and it’s both irritating and cute.
“What you grinning at?”
“What did you notice? About his feet, I mean?”
“About his feet?”
He runs his free hand over the back of mine, and that seems to make something official. Then he takes his eyes of the road for long enough to give me his nicest grin.
“They’re smooth.” He says, as he turns his attention back to the traffic. “His feet were smooth, like your hands. He was wearing shoes and socks when he died. Someone took them.”
I can’t help but laugh.
Beneath it though, something is nagging at me like it did at the crime scene. Miller is patient with me. He knows I’ll get it, and he’s not going to prompt me or make me feel stupid.
Why would it matter if someone stole a tramp’s shoes?
Shit.
“That guy’s not slept rough a night in his life, has he?”
Miller’s grin widens into a proud smile and something in my chest expands a little bit.
“I don’t think so, no.”
“He’s not a tramp. He’s used to clean socks and comfortable shoes.”
He nods and then stops the car in front of a pub.
“Someone’s gone to a lot of trouble to make him look like a tramp. And Leek is thick enough to buy it. But Becker’s hungry, he’ll run the right checks and make a case for himself.”
“And you gave it to him.”
“What do I know, I’m just a gypsy.”
Something else that’s been bugging at me, “That thing you called him, a Gavver, I’ve heard that before, it’s cop, right?”
He shuffles his head a little on his shoulders, like he’s juggling a thought, “Yes, but it’s not a friendly term. It’s
like saying filth or pig.”
“So your best insult for him was that he was a cop?”
“Yup.”
“But you’re a cop too.”
“Yup.”
I smile and let out a simple laugh, a relaxed moment, “You’re a bit of a puzzle box, aren’t you?”
He grins and drums his fingers on the steering wheel.
I lean across and kiss him, its soft and gentle, and his lips feel right. There’s a spark in there somewhere when we kiss, and our tings touch, briefly. He pulls away and nods toward the pub, and I open my door to get out. We link arms on the walk across the car park. The first date’s going to be nothing compared to the second.
Fathers Day
"I think I'm pregnant."
How do you respond to that?
I offered my wife another salted peanut. We were in our local and someone was murdering a 60's country song on acoustic guitar. A special level of hell is reserved for open mic nights. There's only so much Oasis and Rod Stewart I can take without becoming homicidal.
But what had Laura said?
Focus, Miller.
"I'm late. It's been three weeks."
"Are you sure? You eat a lot of fibre, maybe you're just, you know, bunged up."
Not the best thing to say.
She stood up and left. I turned back to the music to hear about someone's sex being on fire.
***
The house was dark and quiet when I got home. I found my mobile phone in the living room.
It was never very mobile.
I'd missed several calls from my best friend, Terry Becker. I could already hear him complaining about it tomorrow. He'd not left any messages, though, so we both failed at the whole phone thing.
I climbed the stairs and stood for a long time in the bedroom doorway. Laura was taking in the slow, peaceful breaths of deep sleep. I watched her for awhile, breathing in and out, until it started to feel creepy. Then I turned around and headed into the spare room, the one that we'd talked about setting aside as a nursery. It was big and empty, and I realized how much it was going to take for me to fill it.
My throat closed in and my heart climbed up a few inches.
I swallowed it all down and went to bed.
