Who Needs Flowers When They're Dead

by George Lincoln

  ‘David, sit down. There have been some concerns raised.’

  Concerns. He fucking hated that word. In police parlance this had joined the lexicon of the utterly meaningless, along with ‘inappropriate’, ‘unprofessional’ and ‘not a team player’. To David, these words all meant the same thing. They don’t like what you do or the way you do it but there’s no rule to say you’re doing anything wrong, so instead we have these bullshit chats to make sure you understand that we don’t like whatever it is you’re doing. But there’s nothing we can do about it.

  ‘Oh, really? I’m sorry to hear that,’ he lied as he sat in the pokiest inspector’s office he’d ever seen.

  One of those rooms so small one person has to stand up to allow someone else enough room to leave. A glorified fucking broom cupboard.

  The unit was run by a detective inspector, with the assistance of a detective sergeant to run each team of four or five constables. At least on paper this is how it was supposed to work. The reality was everything had to meet the approval of the ‘old sweats’ who’d been there since the beginning of time. Like since around the time the Bow Street Runners morphed into Sir Robert Peel’s so-called ‘Peelers’ in 1829 and thus the beginning of the first organised police force in the developed world. Some of those fuckers still called the shots from beyond the grave, David often thought. It didn’t matter how efficient or good an idea might seem, to meet the approval of the fascisti it shouldn’t deviate from the Golden Rule – ‘this is the way it’s always been done.’

  The DI was a decent guy. A graduate, so rare in these parts, he possessed a worldlier view than the typical plod governor. He could recognise a critical mindset might be an asset, might be something to harness and nurture, not something to suppress. The fascisti disagreed. There was an order, a way of doing things that could never be tampered with because therein lies madness, they believed. These fucking hypocrites sat behind desks so old and weathered they made the occupant seem youthful, seething and simmering as the world evolved leaving them permanently out of touch and in complete denial at the same time. David had trouble fitting in.

  ‘Colette says you didn’t look into her case thoroughly enough.’

  That fucking Medusa again, trying to turn everything she looked at to stone. Not content with putting her partner through the ringer, whoring out her children to the highest bidder of sympathy and wasting David’s valuable time completely, it seemed she still wasn’t satisfied.

  ‘I don’t see what more I could have done, sir,’ David replied, at least half-truthfully.

  He knew this couldn’t be it. There was some hidden agenda as always. This was just the appetiser to try and unsettle him, to push him on the back foot before the yorker came through. That case was bullshit from the beginning, and they all knew it. The simpering wretch of a DS sat there scrawling some kind of hieroglyph down on paper as the DI spoke. All part of the game.

  ‘Some feel as though you didn’t show much compassion for the mother in this case. You understand how important it is to show compassion to our victims, don’t you, David?’

  Some feel. Not I feel. The difference may be slight to some but to David it was a fucking crevasse. So he wasn’t sitting talking to the DI with his minion taking notes. He was being tried in the court of public opinion or more specifically, the opinion of the fascisti sitting crunching their bacon fries loudly in the office next door. David never felt the need to pretend to show compassion towards anyone. Mostly because he had no compassion for anyone. Ever. You are born alone in the world and you will die alone, he thought.

  ‘She wasn’t the alleged victim in this case, sir, the children were.’

  David knew how this would now play out. He had refused to play along with their little game of pretending something was true when it wasn’t true just to placate the egos of all those who had gone whining to the DI about him.

  ‘That’s not the point, David. You should be polite and professional to all victims and witnesses, and you know that.’ The DI’s tone shifted to mild irritation that David wasn’t playing the game properly.

  David just nodded. In his mind, he had won and that’s all that mattered. The conversation which began with some drivel about compassion had now shifted to politeness and professionalism, which was the real agenda. We don’t like that you’re different to us, David. We need you to pretend you don’t see through people’s bullshit like the rest of us. That’s all he heard, anyway. He wasn’t really listening any more.

  ‘And one more thing before you go, David,’ the DI added.

  Just one more thing. Fucking Columbo has arrived at the scene. Another tactic to unsettle you. You think you’re through the awkward bit and you’re about to get up and shake hands and smile and pretend you’ve taken on board what was said then they hit you with a doosra out of nowhere.

  ‘I note that you’ve booked out the Clare interview DVD from the evidence room for viewing twelve times in the past month.’

  The DI let the statement just hang there, no question implied or intended. He searched David’s face for any signs of denial or embarrassment. There were none.

  ‘That is correct,’ came the blunt, slightly unnerved, response.

  ‘My understanding is this case is now closed, David. I think you’ve done enough work on this one for now.’

  Message received. Another statement left hanging in the slightly-damp air of the creaking old building the Met saw fit to base them all in. He nodded his acknowledgement and returned to his coffee-stained desk in the main office which suddenly became a hub of activity as the fascisti all pretended to be busy doing something.

  Wankers, David thought to himself.

  CHAPTER 12

  Getting served was a big deal for any teenager. A rite-du-passage if you will. Walking in there trying to act as casual as possible hoping to avoid the total shame of being asked to produce ID. Better to start small and work his way up, the boy thought. Word gets around a small town pretty fast, and it so happened that the one off-licence where everybody in his year could get served was fairly close to his dad’s flat. John’s off-licence. John was probably so grateful for the custom he didn’t really give a shit about the boy’s age, but times were different back then.

  A significant advantage the boy had over other boys in his year, apart from being the oldest, was that he no longer had the inconvenience of a parent at home to keep an eye on him any more. He could pretty much do what he wanted. The world was his oyster. And that evening the oyster in question was a single can of Special Brew. Better to start small and work his way up.

  He’d spent several hours that day after getting home from school making the usual phone calls to various agencies – benefits, housing, council tax – that he was expected to make most days, pretending to be his dad. His dad insisted. It was better if the boy learned these things for himself. How to scam money out of the government. How to get stuff for free without contributing. Valuable lessons in life.

  Eventually he had time to start looking through his dad’s wardrobe for the right outfit for the evening’s mission. He selected what he thought old people wore for such an occasion – smart jeans, collared-shirt, waistcoat, loads of aftershave. This is how people dressed for the off-licence, right? Shoes were a problem – his dad was a short-arse and wore a much smaller size than the boy. He often wondered how they were related at all; they bore no physical resemblance to each other whatsoever. His school Kickers would have to do; they were all he had. Hopefully he’d be in and out of there so fast his shoes wouldn’t even be noticed anyway.

  You might think this was some sort of special occasion. A birthday. A friend’s party. Some sort of get-together. None of the above. This was purely about proving to everybody at school that he could. All his mates had been served there so he couldn’t be the only one. Peer pressure is important to fourteen-year-old boys. As darkness smothered the evening, the boy made his way to the shop. The house of booze. The place where he would lose his beer-cherry.
John seemed surprised to have a customer at all, peering over his reading glasses at the boy from his newspaper. Shopkeepers must be the most well-informed people on the planet, the boy often wondered – they spend the whole day reading the news. Must need to be really sharp to get anything past them, he thought. Good job he wore the aftershave, definitely makes him look older.

  ‘Can of Special Brew, please.’

  ‘Just the one?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  The boy regretted saying please twice. Made him seem younger. Adults weren’t usually so polite when they spoke to other adults, especially his dad. He never said please to anyone.

  ‘That’ll be 89p.’

  Things were a lot cheaper back then in the post-industrial wasteland that South Yorkshire had become. The boy near-enough threw a pound coin across the counter; he was so eager to get the transaction over with.

  ‘You’re eighteen, aren’t you?’

  Damn. His eagerness must have given him away. Shit. Should have worn the checked shirt, the boy thought to himself.

  ‘Yeah, of course I fucking am.’

  This was a gamble. A massive gamble that could have backfired spectacularly. John seemed like a harmless old man, no threat whatsoever. But the boy had seen his dad get his own way by swearing at people loads of times. He knew it wasn’t very nice or polite – he’d never swear at his maths teacher like that – but at that moment he didn’t give a fuck. He just wanted that can of Special Brew.

  ‘Take it and don’t come back here,’ said John wearily, like he’d been sworn at by a thousand kids and it just washed over him like water off a duck’s back.

  The boy didn’t care. He snatched the can and was half-way up the street before anyone could even think about stopping him. He thought about saying ‘keep the change’ as he left but decided that would sound cheesy. He’d never heard his dad say that to anyone, mainly because his dad was a tight bastard and would have probably disowned him for leaving 11p behind. Five minutes later he was back at home, carefully placing his dad’s clothes back in the exact same position in the wardrobe. He didn’t want to risk opening the can yet in case it sprayed out all over his dad’s shirt. Then there would have been hell to pay. Better to change first.

  The boy savoured the fruits of his labour, slowly sipping the disgusting brown ale for the rest of the evening. How do people drink this, he wondered? Just wait until he told his mates at school tomorrow. Best not to drink it too quickly, he was no alcoholic.

  Better to start small and work his way up.

  CHAPTER 13

  Kath had been on the child abuse investigation team forever. One of those people David hated. Boastful of the fact that she had sat in the same dog-eared swivel-chair for most of her working life, unashamed of the lack of progression in her career. A thirty-year constable, too afraid to ever seek promotion for fear that her inadequacies might be exposed to the rest of the fascisti. Better to just sit still. These were the kind of people that ran small departments in the Met, unofficially of course. Everything had to meet their approval and this included new additions to the staff. David was supposed to play the game, pander to her every whim and seek approval at every opportunity, earnestly hopeful that she might acknowledge his contribution to the team with a polite smile or, better still, a kind word.

  David had a simple take on respect. He respected people who were effective at their job and didn’t spend their days ‘swinging the lead’ talking about how good at their job they were. He respected people who stoically just got on with the job in hand and didn’t look to palm-off their menial tasks to other people. He respected people who followed the rules, who didn’t think they were special. Nobody is special. He respected people who treated him as an equal. Kath did not fall into this category and this set the tone of their relationship from day one. Also, she reminded him too much of his mother. Whiney. Northern. Always right.

  David always remembered the advice of his A-level politics teacher, that the wise man knows the right questions to ask, not necessarily the right answer. The Met does not like people who ask questions. They are the police, they do the asking. You do the sit-down-with-your-fucking-mouth-shut.

  We’ll tell you when you can ask a question.

  Never.

  The way any briefing or training session officially ended in the Met was when the person leading the session would say ‘any questions?’ This actually meant ‘thank you for sitting with your mouth shut, now you can go.’ And everybody would file out of the room quietly. David picked this up fairly early on but never fully reconciled himself to it internally.

  David had to be more careful now that he was on the DI’s radar. He couldn’t endlessly play Clare’s interview back to himself any more and had to make do with the transcript he had in his desk drawer, hidden under some other paperwork like a copy of Penthouse magazine. Forbidden fruit. He knew it more or less word-for-word by now. He didn’t need the executive summary.

  His penis.

  My anus.

  Nine years old.

  Alleyway.

  Uncle.

  Dead.

  David knew all the facts he needed. The uncle spent his entire life living with what he’d done to his niece but never saw the utter carnage he had caused. He’d never see her trembling, broken, empty shell of a body sitting before him, re-telling every disgusting detail, pain etched in every corner of her face. Thanks to his death, no courtroom jury would ever see it either.

  That was for David’s eyes only.

  What David may have lacked in experience on the department, he made up for in efficiency. He quickly learned to spot the cases that were going nowhere, that had no proper victim that could ever testify in court. His job was to dispense of these as quickly as possible in order to focus on the hidden gems like Clare. The ones he could savour every minute of. There were plenty of Colettes out there, David realised. Lots of angry, disenchanted women for whom no level was too low to stoop when it came to getting what they wanted. False accusations. Reputations in tatters. Lives ruined. All because of some angry cunt with daddy issues.

  Kath saw things differently. Every victim deserves a chance to be heard, she would say. She’d single-handedly written all of the training manuals and she had all the experience, she would say. She didn’t like the way David treated these women who just made things up to ruin men’s lives. It probably wasn’t their fault they lied. Maybe they were pushed to fabricate lies about someone. Maybe if they had been loved a little bit more as a child, they wouldn’t be such a fuck-up later in life.

  Total victim care. Every time David turned out to be right, it didn’t matter. He should still be wasting his energy on these poor, insufferable women. It was all about the poor women, she would say.

  Words were had with hen-pecked supervisors who knew who really called the shots in the small-office environment. Things were escalated. Dossiers were kept of David’s every movement, every action or perceived inaction. Sob story after sob story was told in his presence, in some vain hope he could acquire more sympathy for these wretched women through some kind of osmosis. David would detach himself, just the way he had been taught.

  Create distance.

  Use cover.

  Transmit.

  He immersed himself deeper in Sally’s suicide diary. How she came to hate her vagina as it brought her so much pain day after day, year after year. How this would make her choose to end her life in such a uniquely brutal and intimate way. He lost himself in Clare’s interview transcript. Born on the wrong side of the wall, cries for help unacknowledged and unheard. People outside of this little world he had created for himself could teach him nothing, he supposed.

  Create distance.

  Eventually, the inevitable happened.

  ‘David, there have been some concerns raised,’ sighed the DI wearily.

  ‘Oh, really. Who have I upset this time?’

  ‘We think perhaps you need a mentor, somebody who has been doing this kind of work for a lo
ng time. Is there anybody here you think you can learn from?’

  David shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. He saw the trap that had been set. Admit to needing help and they were vindicated in all their efforts to undermine him. Deny needing help and he was an arrogant prick who thought he knew better than everyone. Better to say nothing and let them make up their own minds.

  ‘There must be somebody?’ The DI persisted, hoping the awkward decision would be made for him.

  Still nothing. For six months he had worked his cases, clearing out more rubbish more quickly than anyone in the department. His ability to see through bullshit and detect a genuine victim second to none. As it turns out, there aren’t that many. But this wasn’t how the game was supposed to be played. He was supposed to procrastinate, furrow his brow and seem to struggle to cope with it all. To be overwhelmed by the alleged sadness, to not see the lies and deceit until he was told to see the lies and deceit. By somebody on a higher pay grade than him.

  It must be because he lacked experience, they’d assumed.

  ‘Well, I was thinking about pairing you with Kath,’ the DI eventually broke the silence.

  ‘That won’t work,’ came his defiant response, instant this time.

  ‘Why not?’

  Because I fucking hate that woman? Because she represents everything that is wrong with this department, everything that is wrong about the fucking police in general? Because if you pair me with her every day, I will rip out her fucking throat and shit down her neck by the end of the week. These were the initial responses that flashed through David’s mind.

  ‘We have very different ways of working,’ he politely offered instead.