CHAPTER 82
The next few weeks passed far too quickly, as I rarely experienced them as individual days. The files managed something new, delivering a sensation I had thought burnt out of me by Evans, Cooper, Pig and all the rest: shock.

I found myself reliving Peter Nicol-Clements comments about experiences with the police, “Back then”, and I finally understood what a different world they had inhabited.

There were bridges from that time to my own, of course, two of whom had visited both me and Sarah Powell in hospital, and showed a little of what it had been like back then, in that ‘other country’. One word came to me, four syllables that summed those people up: entitlement. Pritchard and all the others had felt it, and flaunted it next to my bed. Ashley Evans epitomised the word in his puzzled expression at his trial: ‘Which one was that?’.

I was absolutely certain Cooper had felt it as he walked that landing at Mersey View, that sense that he had a God-Given Right to use whatever lay before him, in any way he felt like, whichever act might make him feel good.

I found myself talking to Mam about it, although I avoided the details. It was all just so blatant, so casual. She just shook her head, and switched on her computer.

“Easier to show, love. Give me a minute… Hang on while I plug the speakers in… Right. Not watching all of it, but see what you think”

She had logged onto a TV catch-up site, some show that played ‘antique’ clips with a knowing smirk about the Olden Days, but there was nothing Golden there. I watched one clip where the punchline was a shop assistant referring to two customers as “You two puffs”, another one which was an episode from something about a language school, which revisited every racist stereotype imaginable and spiced it all with gratuitous sexism and jokes about tits. I looked at Mam in shock, and she just shrugged.

“My own mother’s favourite show was the Black and White Minstrels, love. Hang on… There”

As I stared in shock at a procession of men in grinning blackface, she told me how popular it had been.

“They only took it off in ’78. Still ran as a stage show for years after”

I looked up from the screen, and met a sharp stare from her.

“Dad and me, it was how we met, wasn’t it?”

“What? At a… a thing like that?”

“No, love! You are not the only one with a conscience in this family, not at all! Your Dad and me, we both used to go on Marches”

The capital letter was audible, so I fell back on the raised-eyebrows ploy, and she bit.

“Apartheid, Anti-Nazi League, that sort of thing. That is what I was trying to show you, Di: when those two fine and upstanding Officers of the Law visited you in hospital, I had already seen enough of their behaviour, of that approach to policing. Dad and me, we had a lot of talks when you chose that career, but he was right. ‘Make a difference’, he said. ‘Wash out the old rubbish, clean it up, that’s what our girl will do’, and he was right. You have an old one to look at, am I right?”

“Yes. It’s… Sod it. Mam, breaking confidence, OK? I had some dealings with a couple of men, one of whom has a record involving young boys, but that wasn’t what I saw”

“Gay man, then. It wasn’t a good time for them, back then”

“So I have discovered!”

“Not just that, love. You are all scientific now, isn’t it? Tamper-proof this, computerised that? Harder to make lies up now”

I bridled a little like that, and she did her own mini-Sammy with her hands.

“No, hear me first. Even those who thought they were the good ones, sometimes they weren’t averse to helping things along, usually when they ‘knew’ they had the right one arrested. Lynette White, Di”

“Ah. Yes”

That struck home, a local murder case where three men had been convicted largely on the evidence from one of them, who had been arrested and interviewed nineteen times over four days, initially with no access to a solicitor despite only having a mental age of eleven. I could see Mam’s point, for the case had been used in our training up at Cwmbran as a ‘How Not to Do Things’ example. I wondered how many of the police involved had been acting in what they saw as ‘good faith’. Years later, the real killer had been found following a rather differently conducted investigation, but three men had spent a large part of their lives banged away. Mam wasn’t finished, though.

“Gay people, aye? They were always kiddy-fiddlers, always ‘Keep your backs to the wall, boys’. Was this case you are on down our way as well?”

“No, Mam. Not this one”

“So it won’t have involved your old friends, then. I won’t have to see them in the papers again”

I was still trying.

“How could it all be so blatant, Mam? So, I don’t know, ACCEPTABLE? AccepTED”

She smiled, and while it started out as a grimace, it warmed quickly.

“Changed, though, hasn’t it? And it brought me and your Dad closer, and that brought you, which brought our little man as well as your bigger one. I can live with a happy ending! Now, one question, and then we change the subject, because it is not a nice one”

“OK. Your question?”

“As the Yanks say, are you looking to rip someone a new you-know-what?”

My grin was now matching hers, as feral as anything Sammy might produce.

“Oh, Mam, I bloody well hope so!”

“Good! Cuppa?”

The weeks were indeed passing, which led, eventually, to another ferocious hangover. It followed a seriously weird evening that involved folded pieces of paper and an ice bucket. Each of the papers held a name, and the barman at the Eli did the picking.

Chris was the picture, the poster child, of guile hidden behind a cloak of innocence. Somehow, he made the draw, and we were divided.

“Right! I will make some adjustments first. No married couples, so, Jonny boy, you Di and Rob are with me, Rhys, Blake and Ellen with my medic. Candice? I am going to take one for the team here!”

Office Blonde snorted.

“I am so NOT making the obvious joke, you bastard! Just explain”

“Your utterly delicious Big Boy is with Darius. You are with me tonight!”

My husband had to bite, of course.

“Oy! O’Connor! I thought it was me that was your Big Boy?”

“Darling Blake, you have been RUINED! This woman, she takes prisoners! Anyway, just a little longer to wait, a few more to come, then we are offski!”

He had explained the plan, which matched my own hen night in some ways, but with the added complication that each of the partners could have been described as a ‘stag’, although in Chris’ case it would have been one with fluffy pink antlers and a rainbow tail. Other couples gradually crept in, and their allocation was decided by a coin-toss. I realised that Chris held our team as closely to his chest as any of its other members. Yet again, Mam’s words: one of the good ones.

Gemma and her rugby player were divided, Deb and Frank, the Sedakas, as I still thought of them, Lexie and Lisa fashionably late, Tiff and Jake, Elaine and Siân. Chris was smug.

“Boys, girls and bigger boys! Tonight is a Frankie anthem! We shall be two tribes, but there will be snacks later, Marlene tells me, so it is almost time to get ourselves fuelled! Are you all… UP for it?”

I would never, ever, get used to his taste in humour, which sometimes seemed to consist entirely of innuendo, and as I thought of THAT word, an innuendo in itself, I struggled not to snort the drink I was sipping, and nearly missed the final arrivals.

Charlie was first through the door, Seb a step behind her, but their hands joined, and a very nervous smile there. My friend herself just looked serene, if a little plumper. I slipped through the crowd to hug her as gently as I could, which brought a much firmer squeeze in return.

“Not fragile, Di! Not no more! All healed, it is now…”

She paused, and her following smile was beatific.

“Properly healed now, isn’t it?”

“When did you get back?”

“Last night, evening, not too late, anyway. Had a lift”

She moved to one side, and I nearly yelped in astonishment.

“Annie! Eric! This is a bloody surprise!”

Eric was the one to reply, something about hearing that there was beer and curry on offer, as Annie just slapped his arm in mock exasperation. It was a few seconds before I felt the pressure of eyes from the other side of the group, and then there was a swirl as three men made their way across to us, and Annie blushed.

“Bryn. Barry. Alun, mate. Good to see you all”

One by one, they hugged and kissed her. I am certain that two of the men had damp eyes, but they covered it up with good humour and bad jokes, shaking hands and laughing as Eric made jokes just as crap.

Off we went to celebrate a last night of notional freedom for Darius and Chris, and Mam’s phrase came back to me.

An awful lot more than ‘one’ of the good ones were with me that night.