by David Menon
He’d been looking into the specifics of the career of James Matthews and whilst his early years had been spent at the foreign office in London and then a stint at the UK representation office at the European Commission in Brussels, the main body of his life’s work had been whilst he was ‘deputy head of mission’, which was basically the role of deputy ambassador, at the British embassy in Moscow. They, meaning both his UK bosses and his Soviet and then Russian hosts, no doubt knew that he’d flirted with membership of the communist party in his youth but that he’d emerged from those years as an avowed social democrat. Barton wondered why he’d been turned down twice during those Moscow years for promotion to be UK Ambassador first to Sweden, and then to Finland, but when he was finally accepted it was to the former Soviet bloc state of Estonia. But what had stopped a man with a seemingly exemplary record from getting the top job? Why had his bosses insisted on keeping him in Moscow all those years? Then when he finally did get the promotion he’d so clearly craved he resigned suddenly after only eight months and left Estonia to start early retirement back home in the UK. It was probably nothing of any worth or value, particularly not to this case, but it was pricking Barton’s curiosity nevertheless.
It was just coming up to nine o’clock and Barton decided to switch off his computer and head for home. DI Ollie Wright came into his office.
‘Sir, the Volkswagen Golf belonging to Sylvia Clarke has been found’ he announced. ‘It had been burned out on some waste ground between Eccles and Leigh. There was no sign of anyone having been inside’.
NO SPOKEN WORD
THREE
The still of the night air was punctuated by the shrill metallic ringtone of the mobile that had been perched precariously on the edge of the bedside table. Joe’s hand reached from under the duvet and slipped his thick fingers around it, the top of his thumb going straight to the ‘answer’ pad on the touch screen.
‘DC Alexander?’
It went with the job but it was just shy of six o’clock in the morning and he hadn’t had much sleep. He wasn’t complaining as such that his girlfriend Erica-Jane was being so demanding in the sex department but there was a part of him that wished it was because she craved for him to be inside her rather than to satisfy her desperation to get pregnant.
‘Okay’ said Joe, rubbing his eyes and hoping to free them from the haunted lack of enough sleep look that they must be covered with. The squad had a new case. His colleague and best mate DS Adrian Bradshaw was on his way to pick him up and take him into work. He sat up and swung his legs from under the duvet, placing his feet firmly on the bedroom floor. ‘I’ll see you in half an hour, mate’.
‘Baby?’ said Erica-Jane in that sleepy whiny voice that he could easily mistake for a small child needing the attention of one of her parents. She stroked his back with her long finger nails. It looked like she’d made quite an impression with them last night. There were red scratch marks all over Joe’s upper back. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Sorry, babe’ said Joe as he turned and kissed her forehead. ‘Duty calls’.
‘Oh God, at this time?’
‘You knew what you were getting into when you hitched up with a copper’ said Joe as cheerfully as he could as he stepped round the bedroom naked.
‘This is my most fertile time of the month, Joe’ she said, her voice growing in seriousness. ‘I’m not going to sacrifice my right to have a child for the sake of the Greater Manchester police’.
‘Erica-Jane, nobody has a right to have a child and I’m being called into work because some poor sod has been murdered’.
‘So you’re saying you want to deny me my right to have a child?’
‘No, I’m saying you haven’t got a right and you’re only twenty years old so there’s plenty of time. And what I need to concentrate on now is doing the job that has everything to do with how I maintain this house because it pays my salary and that’s how we’ll be able to support having a child’.
‘What do you mean? You can get benefits’
‘Don’t even go there’ said Joe. ‘Have you even taken five minutes to get to know me in the months we’ve been together because if you had you’d know that if I have a family it’s because I can afford to keep them on what I earn and not what I take’.
‘Yes, and that’s more important to you than my need for us to have a child?’
‘Oh Erica-Jane, don’t be ridiculous!’ Joe snapped. ‘In order to support a child then you need a job and that’s what I’m going to now’.
‘Oh so I’m being ridiculous now, am I?’
‘To be honest, yes’.
‘I suppose your mum has been bad mouthing me again’ Erica-Jane snarled. ‘Calling me this and that because I’m living here rent-free and I don’t have a job. Well how can I get a job? They only give them these days to immigrants. We shouldn’t have to fight for jobs in our own country. But it isn’t our own country anymore, is it? Those bastards in Brussels have seen to that. That’s why I really need this baby, Joe. It’s so hard for a young woman from a white working class background like me. I need to feel my worth as a woman and show your mum that I can make you happy’.
Joe could’ve laughed out loud at her ridiculous take on reality but managed to contain himself. He’d heard it all before and still it sounded like the biggest load of bollocks. ‘You don’t need a baby to do that, Erica-Jane’.
‘So would you prefer me to be one of those stupid sexists who thinks she doesn’t need a man for anything let alone having a baby?’.
‘I think you mean feminists’.
Erica-Jane waved her hand dismissively. ‘Oh sexist, feminist, whatever, it’s all the same to me and they all talk a load of old bull’.
Joe headed onto the landing shaking his head and wondering if Erica-Jane would ever actually grow up. She was starting to do his head in. Everyone said she’d be a handful before they got together and in the ordinary ways of life she certainly had turned out to be a full-on dose of high maintenance. Except in bed. That’s when the mask had slipped. She’d turned out to be rather less than experienced than he’d have imagined and he’d had to teach her more or less everything.
What she had been genuinely forthright about though right from the start was her total disinterest in a career or even a job. She wanted a baby. She wanted to be a Mum. Joe was quite happy to become a Dad. He’d always wanted kids but he was realizing fast that he didn’t want them with Erica-Jane. Passion and desire and her apparent need for him to bang her like a barn door at every opportunity had blinded Joe to the fact that he and Erica-Jane were a million miles apart in almost every way.
‘What are you thinking?’ Erica-Jane asked after she joined him on the landing.
‘Nothing’ said Joe. ‘Absolutely nothing at all’.
‘Liar! Don’t forget that if you hadn’t have met me you were heading straight into middle aged with only a remote control for the telly to hold onto at night. I saved you from that and now you owe me’.
‘I don’t owe you anything, Erica-Jane’
‘Yes you fucking do! And yet all the time these days I feel like I’m alone in this whole relationship’.
‘Really? Well join the fucking club!’
Joe slammed the bathroom door on her and then had his usual shower. After he’d shaved and brushed his teeth he came out of the bathroom to go and get dressed. Erica-Jane was still standing there on the landing looking for all the world like life had let her down so very badly. What the fuck did she expect? Well he didn’t want a cross between a woman and a daughter for a girlfriend. He didn’t want to play anybody’s father figure. Then just to prove everything he didn’t want she threw her arms round him and burst into tears.
‘I’m so sorry, babe’ she sobbed. ‘I didn’t mean to go on at you like that. It’s just that it’s so desperately unfair. I so want your child and if I don’t have kids and become a full-time Mum then what else is there in life?’
DS Adrian Bradshaw was fifteen minutes later tha
n he’d intended picking Joe up.
‘Bloody traffic’ Adrian cursed. ‘The sun is only just up and yet the roads are bursting. Anyway, what’s with you? You look absolutely knackered’.
‘That’s because I am, mate’.
‘Well if you will move nubile twenty year-olds in with you’.
‘My dick feels like a sharpened fucking pencil’.
Adrian pulled a face. ‘Oh spare me. You’ll put me off the bacon sandwich that’s got my name on it in the canteen’.
‘What happened, Adrian? How did I get here?’
‘That’s not the question you should be asking yourself, my friend’.
‘And what is?’
‘How are you going to get yourself out of where you are now?’
Louisa Pilkington was nervous about starting her first day as an administration assistant at the Greater Manchester police headquarters. It was easy to get there from her flat in Sale. She just got on the tram at the end of her road and got off close to where she needed to be in order to head into work. It wasn’t far from the hallowed ground of United’s Old Trafford stadium and that might have pleased her Dad no end. He was a lifelong United fan and Louisa had been to a fair few matches there with him and her older brother. But none of her family knew about her new job because she wasn’t on speaking terms with any of them. She’d thought about sending her Mum a text but then decided not to. She wouldn’t have received a reply anyway. It broke her heart every day but she had to get on with her life and hope that one day things would get back to normal. It was on days like this that she really missed her Mum and Dad though. She’d love to hear their voices calming her down and encouraging her like they always used to. She didn’t know which was worse. The loneliness that comes from having absolutely nobody on this earth that you’re connected to or the loneliness that comes from having people, having family who were deliberately trying to ignore your existence. She knew what she’d done wrong in their eyes. But she couldn’t do anything about that now even if she wanted to.
She was told to report to Detective Superintendent Jeff Barton. The sergeant on the desk downstairs told her not to worry. She’d be alright with Barton, he ran a good team and they’d make her feel at home in no time.
She took the lift to the second floor and began walking down the corridor. She’d chosen a plain black suit for her first day with a short straight skirt and a Chanel style jacket. She wore shiny black high heels, dark tights and a white blouse with the collar folded over the top of her jacket. She’d made sure that her nails were nice and neatly painted in the same deep red to match her lipstick. She’d brushed back her black shoulder length hair. First impressions were everything and she’d admired herself positively in the mirror before leaving home earlier. But now she was full of doubts. Maybe that skirt was a bit too short. Perhaps she should’ve put her hair in a ponytail. There were some fit looking blokes about both in uniform and in plain clothes. She was going to like working here even if just for that reason but would any of them like the way she looked? They might think she looked like a tart.
She continued her way down the corridor and there were only three doors left so it must be one of them that she had to be heading for.
DS Adrian Bradshaw and DC Joe Alexander were striding along after having collected a bacon sandwich each plus a coffee for Adrian and a tea for Joe from the canteen.
‘How can you eat a bacon sandwich without sauce?’ asked Joe with a screwed up face.
‘Quite easily’ Adrian replied. ‘I just open my mouth and bite some of it off, chew it, swallow it. Lovely’.
‘But no sauce?’ Joe continued as if Adrian was trying to breathe without air. ‘And you get them to cut the fat off your rashers of bacon too’.
‘Look, I don’t like sauce, I don’t like red and I especially don’t like brown. I can’t stand the fucking smell of it. Now when did this become a crime exactly? Have I missed some act of parliament that I should know about?’
They were so lost in their own little bantering world that they didn’t even notice the young girl who they had to split one to the left and the other to the right to get past.
‘Erm, excuse me?’ Louisa ventured as confidently as she could. She didn’t know why she was so scared of this particular situation. She’d faced up to much bigger traumas than this in her life. But this was all part of moving on and getting her life into a more positive place. She had to make it work or else none of her recent past would’ve been worth it.
‘Yes?’ Adrian responded. ‘You look a bit lost?’
‘I’m looking for DSI Jeff Barton’s office?’
‘Well then this is your lucky day’ said Adrian. ‘Because that’s where we work’.
Louisa relaxed a little. The man seemed nice. ‘I’m starting work there too today. I’m the new administration assistant. I’m Louisa Pilkington’.
Adrian and Joe shook hands with Louisa and introduced themselves.
‘Have you done this kind of police work before?’ asked Joe.
‘No, and I’m really nervous about getting it all right’.
‘Well don’t worry about that’ said Adrian. He was looking into Louisa’s blue eyes. She was strikingly pretty like she didn’t have to use much make-up but she had done anyway. Maybe it was a confidence thing? His own two daughters were now well into make-up. His Mum and sister-in-law had been guiding them through what suited them best. It would’ve been something they shared with their mother had she not been snatched away from their lives so brutally. It had been three years now since his wife Penny had been murdered during the course of one of Adrian’s investigations that went so terribly wrong. Sometimes the pain still felt like it had only happened yesterday. ‘The boss is a fair bloke and good to work for. He’ll expect you to do a thorough job but he won’t be on your back every five minutes’.
‘Well I like people to treat me as if I do have a brain’.
‘And you’ll be the only girl in a team of four men’ said Joe.
Louisa smiled. ‘That sounds good to me’.
‘You won’t feel ganged up on?’
‘I can hold my own’.
‘I’m sure you can’ said Joe. ‘Well let’s go through and introduce you to the boss and DI Ollie Wright. We’ve been handed a brand new case so this is a good day for you to start. Don’t be daunted by anything and ask questions about whatever you don’t understand’.
‘Thanks guys’ said Louisa. ‘I feel better now that I’ve spoken to you two’.
‘Well you’re lucky’ said Adrian. ‘Because Joe isn’t normally that nice’.
The big white board was already in place at the head of the squad room and covered with various photographs, the main one being in the middle. It was a head and shoulders of Sylvia Clarke, the partner of the murder victim Maria Taylor whose blood stained, bullet ridden face was right next to it. Louisa was fascinated by the pictures. She wasn’t blood thirsty or squeamish at all, she never had been, and before she got the job with the police she was down to being one of the last two candidates for a job at Salford Royal working on reception in the casualty unit. But then this job with the police came through and she decided that she’d seen enough of hospitals in recent years. She wanted a break from them.
She thought her new boss DSI Jeff Barton looked really cool stood there in his casual leather jacket and chinos. He’d come across really well too when she introduced herself. He’d made her a cup of tea and then said that he’d give her a detailed induction after the briefing which had to take precedence over everything. He said that he hoped she wasn’t afraid of jumping in at the deep end and that her job would require her to use her own initiative a lot of the time and to always think one step ahead of whatever the detectives asked her to do or find out for them. She impressed him with her declaration that she’d received top marks during training on the basic induction course before being assigned to his team. DI Ollie Wright had made a good impression on her too. He was dressed more formally than the boss in his
three piece suit, shirt and tie and he had the same cheeky grin as Will Smith. It was still very early days and she’d barely been in the building half an hour, but with Adrian and Joe completing the picture she got the distinct feeling that these four men were going to become the family she had lost. It was going to be that good and she couldn’t wait to get started on the actual work.
‘Less than twenty-four hours ago this woman was shot in cold blood in the middle of the afternoon behind the counter of her shop’ said Barton. ‘It looks increasingly to me like it was a professional job. The CCTV wires had been cut just minutes before the murder took place and whoever did it went straight in and out again once it was complete. Her partner of over twenty years standing, Sylvia Clarke, has disappeared but her car was found burnt out last night’.
‘Could she have ordered the hit as it were, sir?’ DS Adrian Bradshaw wondered.
‘It’s hard to say until we’ve spoken to her but we do know that the couple were having problems and that’s been confirmed by their friends James and Diana Matthews although I don’t believe they’re telling the whole truth because I also don’t believe that they share the same perspective on this’.
‘What would Sylvia Clarke have to gain from her partner’s demise, sir?’
‘She would inherit the shop’ said DI Ollie Wright, answering on behalf of his boss. ‘But the couple had little in the way of savings or cash put aside for a rainy day. They liked to indulge themselves with foreign holidays, first class travel on the train when they went down to London which was quite often. They were good to themselves’.
‘But who looked after the shop when they were off here, there and everywhere?’ DC Joe Alexander wanted to know.
‘They just shut up shop’ answered DI Wright. ‘They’d made enough money and they weren’t interested in taking any of it to the other side as it were. They also had enough regular customers to be able to cover their absences with bulk buying before they left’.
