Something to Declare by Cyclist

Chapter 28

That was indeed a bombshell, and it took me a while to work out what was going on.

I was given the usual copy of the complaint, and informed that Internal Governance would be in touch to arrange an interview once I had had time to digest it and send them a reply via Tom and Dilip.

I was shaking when I got home, and of course he picked upon that straight away, I explained, and before I realised what he was up to Naomi was in the sitting room with some more biscuits.

“Right, girl, have you ever worked with a police witness statement taker?”

“No, we just do our own and the boss checks them against notebooks et cetera”

“Well, it is a real art, they lead you through your memories and you’d be surprised what comes up. More detail than you thought you knew! Albert used to do it, and I think you need to have a little session with him”

That evening Albert and Naomi came for dinner, and as we ate, he teased out the story of Junior’s assault, the fight, the arrest and my eviction from the search of person. The complaint was a pretty basic one, as such things go, that I had not only grabbed him by the soft parts when taking him down, but had let my hand linger there and gave him some squeezes. When we were in the search room, I had then slipped my hand down the front of his trousers….etc

“What sort of trousers did he have on?”

“I don’t remember, but the CCTV should show it.”

“Firstly, that footage should show where your hands were during the arrest. Secondly, you say he was rather obese?”

“Not as big as his gunter of a wife, but large, yes”

“’Gunter’” asked Naomi.

I explained. We both blushed.

“Well” said Albert, ”Consider this. A large man, with a very tight belt because his trousers are below his belly and need that belt to keep them up. There would be obvious difficulty, if not impossibility, in sliding a hand down past his waistband. That is your starting point for a defence. “

“We have another angle, dear” said Naomi. “He says in the complaint that you were obviously some ‘tranny’ or some such ‘pervert’ but I do believe that you were certainly not out in public when this assault took place. As you managed to persuade the entire Central Region rugby team that you were male, I find it rather unlikely that he could have spotted your true nature. That means he has been informed of it by some other source. Now think”

I ran over events in my head, and as Naomi had promised, Albert’s quiet but steady technique was bringing back memories, and the one that was shouting in my ear was Christmas Day. One particular piece of pond life who had stared at me very hard as I counted the shift down to my wonderful afternoon and evening with my family. I knew my first course of action back at work would be to check who he was, and whether he was associated with Billy James Anstey, the man we arrested.

There’s another fall out from work, right there, the habit of using full names, as if reading a charge in Court or chastising a child. I would see exactly who this other person was when I got back to work.

It was odd, but when Geoff had been on the receiving end, I found a hardness inside me that stemmed from my feelings for him. As I have already said, nobody messes with him... Now it was me, I lost that inner steel. I had always been frightened of coming out as myself because I would have had to fight alone, and there I was again. Naomi looked hard at me.

“Don’t you dare, girl! I’ve seen that look before: ‘poor little me, all alone in the big bad world, never cope, run away now’. Well, I suggest that before you go all soppy and stupid you look round this room, and when you go to work tomorrow you look around your team, and then you grow up. Just you think how many other girls like you have to do this all on their own, and then lose that fucking self pity!”

Both Albert and Geoff looked up. Geoff looked absolutely shocked, but Albert just smiled fondly and murmured “Ah, that’s the girl I married!”

She slammed the complaint file down on the coffee table. “We will have this little turd and he will be skinned alive in Court, and before that your disciplinary people will tell him to go and stick his head up his arse and inhale sharply. Are we agreed?”

We all nodded, two of us in shock, two others holding hands while one smiled happily. Ye gods, what must she have been like in uniform? I shuddered, but it was a happy shudder. She was absolutely right–my transition so far had been the stuff of dreams.

Of course, I started to cry, and we had a group hug, and all that stuff that comes from having true friends in a crisis. I am so very, very lucky.

The next day at work I got into the seizure records, and there he was, Alfie John Smith. Alfie and Billy, if they weren’t connected I was Arnold Schwarzenegger. They both lived in Belvedere in Kent, a place with some truly…charming areas, and that would seem to be my source. Billy gets taken down by bloke with long red ponytail, Alfie sees woman with ditto, a few questions around the airport…

Fuck them both. Naomi was right, absolutely so. I had right on my side, for starters, but I also had the team, my new family, my neighbours, and when I stopped to think about it, probably the management from Vanessa down.. Why exactly was I feeling so sorry for myself?

I gave myself a little Smile.