The Follow

by Paul Grzegorzek

  I just stared, knowing full well how frustrating it was as the interviewing officer to have nothing but silence on the tape.

  Barnett leaned forward, taking his hand from the pepper spray it had strayed to during my outburst. ‘Come on Gareth, we’re only trying to find out what happened. You can’t blame us for that. We’re trying to help Jimmy.’

  I stared at the wall behind his head as I counted silently to ten. They tried a few more times, but I was having none of it and at 0843 hours they wrapped up the interview. Six minutes was probably the shortest PSD interview ever, but I didn’t feel particularly special as I was led back to the consultation room and left there with my solicitor.

  When we were alone I looked at Kerry, trying to gauge her mood. ‘Uh, look, I’m sorry about that but this is bullshit and they know it. They’re just wasting time in the hopes of an easy outcome while the person that did it is laughing at us.’

  She sighed and shuffled her notes. ‘We all know that but I really don’t think you helped yourself in there. You don’t respond well to pressure, do you?’

  ‘Actually, I do. It’s just bullshit that makes me lose my rag.’

  ‘I see. Well, all we can do is wait and see what happens. I can only assume that you’ll be suspended pending further investigation. With something this serious at least we can hope for a short bail date.’

  I didn’t really listen to anything past the word ‘suspended’. My stomach tied itself up in knots again as I thought about the grief that Davey had wrought. Every time I thought the slimy little bastard had gone too far, he somehow managed to go still further. He couldn’t have had a better result if he’d planned it this way.

  A few minutes later I was hauled in front of the custody sergeant again. This time he had a bail notice for me. I was to return to Worthing custody at 11.00 a.m. the next Wednesday. Kerry had been right about the short bail date, usually bail was for a month or more while they, or should I say we, tried to put together a convincing case. Kerry said goodbye to me at the doors and after taking my mobile number she drove off, leaving me with my arresting officers.

  ‘You’re okay getting back to Hove I take it, mate?’ Barnett asked, his voice sweet as he turned and closed the door, shutting me outside with no hint of remorse.

  Cursing under my breath, I began the long walk back to the train station, adding Barnett to the mental list I kept of people who would get their come-uppance come judgement day.

  9

  TWO HOURS later I was sitting at home in my front room, enjoying the space that I hadn’t refilled since my ex-wife, Lucy, had taken all of the furniture, apart from the sofa and my widescreen TV. I flicked idly through the channels, unable to concentrate on anything in particular as I tried to ignore the frustration that was nagging at me.

  They had taken my warrant card before they chucked me out of custody and I felt more than a little naked without it. It had been a constant companion for the last eight years, a shield that I could use to help people without being dragged through the court system myself. Some use it had turned out to be.

  My phone rang for the fourth time since I’d been back and I didn’t even bother to take it out of my pocket, knowing it would be Kev Sands trying to make sure I was okay. I couldn’t face talking to him right now, I felt like I might dissolve into tears if anyone showed me the slightest sympathy.

  Eventually the ringing stopped and I got up to go into the kitchen, tripping over the worn patch in the green carpet that I kept meaning to get around to replacing. One day. I’d intended to make a cup of tea but one look at the mess I’d left the kitchen in put me off. I’d been working so much recently that I had been literally dumping stuff on the worktops and running for the last four days and it looked like a group of students had moved in. Dishes and takeaway boxes littered the worktops and the sink was piled high with dirty crockery. Just looking at it depressed me even more. I grabbed my jacket from the end of the banister and headed out, not sure where I was going but needing to get away.

  I got into the car and drove on autopilot, fairly unsurprised when I ended up sitting outside my dad’s bungalow on Farm Hill in Woodingdean, where he’d lived alone since my mother died of cancer ten years before. It was a pleasant street, set back from the main road and dotted with a mixture of houses and bungalows that stretched up the hill towards the fields that separated the village from the A27.

  I got out of the car and crunched up the gravel driveway, hearing Lily – my dad’s German shepherd – begin barking as I intruded on her territory. I walked up the side of the bungalow, past the half-finished shed that had been in that state since before I joined the job, and was greeted at the back gate by a whirling dervish of black and tan fur. Lily’s lips were pulled back to show her impressive teeth as she barked and snarled, but we knew each other of old and I knew that she was just showing off. As soon as I was through the gate, she turned the snarls into little yaps as she jumped up, trying to growl and lick my face at the same time.

  True to form, my dad was ignoring the noise, trusting Lily to get rid of anyone who wasn’t welcome, no matter how many times I told him to listen to her just in case. I tried the back door handle and found it unlocked. Sometimes I wished that he would get burgled, just so that he’d take a little more care in future.

  I kicked Lily’s football up the lawn and she chased after it, grinding the leather with her back teeth as I walked into the kitchen. It was cleaner than mine and I set about figuring out the coffee machine as my dad finally came in from the front room to see who had invaded.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’ he asked, sounding old and tired.

  ‘Now there’s a story. Let me make coffee and I’ll tell you about it,’ I replied, turning to look at him over my shoulder.

  He looked as tired as he sounded and had dark circles under his eyes, presumably from lack of sleep. He wasn’t a tall man, only five foot six if he stretched, but he was stocky, with a belly that had always inspired me to fight my genetics, most of which I had inherited from him. His shock of white hair was sticking out in all directions the same as it always did, and several days’ worth of snowy stubble made him look older than his sixty years.

  ‘If you keep growing that beard, you’ll end up looking like Papa Smurf!’ I warned him, as the coffee machine finally yielded to my ministrations and began to make the right noises. ‘You having trouble sleeping still?’

  He nodded, moving to the cupboards and getting out a couple of battered but serviceable ceramic mugs. ‘Yeah, I’ve been having the nightmares again.’

  ‘About Mum?’ She had passed away while holding his hand, lying in a hospital bed with dozens of tubes coming out of her and he hadn’t been the same man since. When she had died, something indefinable but vital had gone out of him at the same time.

  ‘Yeah. Anyway don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. What’s your news?’

  More and more often recently, my father lived vicariously through me. He still worked when he felt like it, but he had made an absolute mint in the first dotcom explosion and he probably had more money squirreled away than I would earn in ten years. He’d always wanted to be a copper though, ever since he was a lad, and I honestly thought he would cry with joy the day I passed out of Ashford training school.

  I sighed, dreading telling him my news, not wanting to disappoint him. ‘I think you’d better sit down before I tell you this one Dad, it’s a biggie.’

  He looked at me over the top of his glasses, a warning expression on his face. ‘You can stop treating me like I’m made of glass; I can read the papers as well as the next man. Probably better, seeing as the next man is you.’

  I ignored his jibe, swallowing the echo of guilt I felt from having dropped out of my English degree so many years before. Although it had never bothered Dad, I felt like I had let Mum down. She had been so proud when her little boy got into university. Suddenly the words he had used actually registered with my brain. ‘Read the papers? Oh shit!’

&nbs
p; He passed a folded copy of the Argus over to me while he took over coffee duty. The headline read, in massive letters: POLICE OFFICER ARRESTED IN SHOCK ATTEMPT MURDER EVIDENCE SWITCH!

  It went on to explain underneath about the court case and the fact that one of the officers (who couldn’t be named for legal reasons) had been arrested and bailed pending further enquiries. All the other officers in the case were named, and the lack of mine in print was a glaring indication of who they were talking about, to me at least. So much for keeping this one quiet.

  ‘You could have phoned to see if I was okay,’ I accused my dad, feeling hurt.

  ‘I did bloody phone you, twice! If you ever looked at the damn thing then maybe you’d know I called!’ he threw back at me as he delivered a steaming mug of coffee that suddenly I didn’t fancy; my stomach heaving as I read the rest of the article.

  In a nutshell, it said that the police had screwed up and that a notorious criminal had walked free after stabbing a police officer because of an evidence blunder. It was a good job most of the local criminals couldn’t read much more than the health warning on a cigarette packet; there’d be an open season on police otherwise.

  I walked through into the lounge and sat down on the creaky old leather sofa, looking around the room and enjoying the sense of familiarity that took some of the sting out of my situation. The room hadn’t changed for years, the leather sofa being accompanied by an ancient-looking leather recliner chair stacked up with cushions just the way Dad liked them. Dark wooden bookshelves lined every available wall and at one end stood a dining table with four chairs around it, used only at Christmas and for the occasional poker nights that were held there. A word of warning here, never, ever, play poker with my dad if you don’t want to go home broke. I swear he has a sixth sense when it comes to cards.

  The other end of the room stood a TV that dwarfed the small table it sat on. Last year on his birthday I had bought him a widescreen plasma, which I suspect still sat in its box somewhere in the loft. He didn’t believe in getting rid of things until they wore out and even then only when they couldn’t be fixed anymore. The whole room smelled slightly of dog and books, which is actually quite a pleasant combination if you’ve grown up with it, which I had.

  My dad came into the room juggling a plate of ginger creams, a bowl of peanuts and his mug of coffee. I waited until he got comfortable before I started talking. ‘So, I assume you can guess that I got arrested last night?’

  He nodded, slurping his coffee noisily.

  ‘Well, they think I might have had something to do with the knife being replaced. I assume that I don’t need to tell you that I had nothing to do with it?’

  The look he gave me told me everything I needed to know on that front.

  ‘Okay,’ I continued hastily, ‘well I told them where to stick it, basically, but I’ve been suspended and bailed out until the middle of next week. I’m not fucking happy.’

  I tried not to swear in front of my dad; he didn’t mind but old habits die hard. Up until the age of eighteen I would get a smack round the head for anything worse than ‘bloody’.

  He finished the ginger cream he was eating and stared off into space thoughtfully before looking back at me. ‘Is there any way that they can link you to anything that’s happened? I assume that this Davey chap was the one who managed to get the evidence lost?’

  I nodded. ‘Yeah, he’s the one who must have done it. He was laughing at me in court before it came out but I’m the last person logged to have touched the knife.’

  ‘What about fingerprints, wouldn’t they have dusted the rubber knife?’

  I’d already thought about this and come to a conclusion about it on the walk to the train station after my interview. ‘Well, PSD didn’t mention it, so I can only assume that they checked it for prints and didn’t find any. They probably neglected to disclose that so that there was more chance of me making an admission.’

  Dad shook his head angrily. ‘They really are bastards, aren’t they? What did your sergeant, Kevin isn’t it, have to say about all of this?’

  I finished my coffee just in time to avoid getting it spilled as Lily streaked into the room and threw herself on my lap. ‘I think he’s on my side,’ I said, fending the dog off, ‘but he has to try and stay as neutral as possible. The only link he has to the case is that he’s our supervisor. He wasn’t there that day until after the evidence had been bagged and Jimmy was en route to the hospital so he’s in the clear, but if shit sticks to us it’ll stick to him as well by association, if he isn’t careful.’

  Lily finally got the message and went off to hunt biscuits, leaving me brushing what looked like half her coat off my lap. Dad took pity and threw her one which disappeared in a single gulp.

  ‘Well,’ he said, glancing at a picture of the family that hung on the wall between bookcases, ‘I’m only glad your mother isn’t here or she’d be off down the PSD office dragging them around by the ear and shouting at them for being idiots!’

  I smiled, knowing that he wasn’t far off the mark. ‘Yeah, well, in some ways I wish she was.’

  We both lapsed into the awkward silence that sprang up between us whenever Mum was mentioned. I’d been at university through the worst of it and carried a sense of guilt at not having been there that had never really faded, despite my dad’s best efforts to reassure me.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ he asked, breaking the spell.

  I sighed and shook my head. ‘I don’t know Dad, I really don’t. All I can do is wait and see what happens, but I just feel so useless. I should be out hounding Davey’s every step but instead I’m sitting around feeling sorry for myself. What would you do?’

  ‘Just sit it out son. Keep your nose clean. Don’t give them an excuse to turn it into a witch-hunt.’

  I nodded, knowing he was right, not daring to tell him about my encounter with the Budds. No matter how much he loved me, he would never approve, and the less he knew, the less he had to lie about if anyone came asking.

  ‘You’re right. I suppose I’d better get back and get in touch with Kev; he’ll want to make sure I’m okay. Thanks for the coffee, I’ll call you later.’ He waved as I left, stopping to fuss Lily on the way out.

  Back at the car, I put the key in the lock, and then paused as my peripheral vision caught something that my copper’s nose told me was out of place. I glanced around, trying to look casual, and saw a silver Clio parked about fifty yards up the road, right on the bend, with a person sitting in it reading a newspaper. It struck me as strange behaviour for a side street and I automatically looked around for anything else out of place, only to see the curtains twitch on a house across the road as my eyes swept across it.

  So PSD were having me followed. It didn’t surprise me; if they thought I had something to do with the evidence, it made sense that they would have a surveillance team on me, hoping that I would run to Davey. Being an SV officer myself, and pretty good at it, I knew they should have been better than that. The first thing they teach you on the surveillance course is not to stand out. Had the person up the road in the car been on the phone or just sitting there with the engine running it wouldn’t have looked out of place, but reading a newspaper just screamed that they were prepared for a long wait. Add to that the fact that I would never have noticed the officer in the house opposite if they hadn’t jerked back when I looked in their direction, and you had an SV team that were either poorly trained or wanted me to know they were there.

  Shaking my head, I gave the guy hidden behind the curtains a cheery wave as I drove away slowly, making sure that they didn’t lose me. If they wanted to know what I was up to I was equally keen to show them that I had nothing to hide. So long as they didn’t start looking in next door’s garden.

  10

  THE NEXT day my situation hadn’t improved any and I was still followed everywhere I went. That morning I had taken my gaggle of followers on a walk over the downs and returned home feeling marginally better than I h
ad since I’d been arrested. I parked up just around the corner from the house and was more than a little surprised to see a uniformed police officer standing on my front step as I trudged up the road.

  I didn’t recognise him but as he looked about twelve, I assumed that he was from the tutor unit. He looked at me with worry written all over his face as I approached and came up the steps towards him. He put out a hand that hovered hesitantly in front of my chest. ‘Uh, I’m sorry sir, you can’t come in. This is a crime scene.’

  I looked at him in amazement. ‘Crime scene? This is my bloody house!’

  His cherubic face took on a look of anger as I swore. ‘Sir, I’m warning you under section five of the Public Order Act, if you swear again I will be forced to arrest you!’

  I looked around ostentatiously. ‘Do you see anyone here who is likely to be harassed, alarmed or distressed by my swearing?’ I asked, seeing the doubt blossom on his face as I quoted the act right back at him. ‘I don’t – and, as you can’t be the one to feel any of that, I suggest you stop being a pillock and get someone who knows their job.’

  I wasn’t making a friend here, I knew, but I wasn’t going to stand around and be dictated to by a kid who hadn’t even handcuffed someone on his own yet. We were saved by an officer I knew sticking his head out of the door, presumably to see what the commotion was about. Andy Coucher was a top-rate officer and, about a year ago, he had moved on to the tutor unit to pass on some of his hard-gained street knowledge.

  ‘Ah, PC Bell, you horrible excuse for a police officer! When was the last time you washed up?’

  I felt my face go red as I realised that they would have seen the state of my kitchen. I still hadn’t got around to cleaning it up; it just didn’t seem important somehow. ‘Uh, I’ve had family staying,’ I lied, ‘and I’ve been doing eighteen-hour shifts the last week. I was going to wash up; it’s not normally like that!’ I saw the grin that crept over the probationer’s face as his tormentor was publicly embarrassed and I wished I could slide through the floor.