CHAPTER 28
Kate was waiting at the station for us, and I was touched by the way Shan hugged her as a greeting. Whatever steps the two women had been taking with Chantelle, they seemed to have done immense good in her life. There would always be a shadow behind her eyes, which was something I myself could never shake, but she had opened out and relaxed immeasurably.

“Look, Mum, I got music! Present from Merry, yeah”

Kate smiled, one arm over her fosterchild’s shoulders, and I could see at once how they were completing each other. Polly was clearly either a genius or remarkably in tune with her charges, for I realised that I could no longer conceive of my two closest friends without their child.

“Merry, no spoiling her, OK? I assume she had cake and stuff as well?”

“My lips are sealed, for it is sinful to utter untruths”

“Sealed? Glued together with chocolate, more like it! Did you find the…ah. Annie, I assume from the soppy expression that September is definitely on. Thank you both, anyway, Shan doesn’t get out as often as we would like”

I wondered if she meant that she didn’t have the confidence rather than the desire, but left the question unasked. We left them at the station, and were soon rattling North to where Simon was waiting to take his fiancée off to that most romantic of destinations, a lecture on some obscure religious topic. Who was I to object or belittle, though? The whole point of being a couple is sharing, sharing interests and lives, and, as my own sharing would involve driving through north-western France while two boys rode bicycles a silly distance, I was hardly in a position to point and laugh.

“Merry…”

“Yes, love?”

“Would you like us to sort you out some permanent storage space in the house; wardrobe, drawers, that sort of thing?”

“That, cuz, is something I had sort of counted on happening. It would not be seemly to sleep under the same roof as unmarried people, and, well, I did hope that I might prevail upon you to–“

“Miriam, shut up. After all you have done for us, what else could I do, aye? No, let me rephrase that: I keep asking myself, what more can I do? I have missed my family, aye, and there they are ready to sing at my wedding, and I hear the phrase ‘the least I can do’, and I want to do nothing in any way ‘least’, aye?”

That brought a squeeze of my hand, and another smile, and watching the twinkles that I remembered from our youth dance in her eyes, I had absolutely no doubts as to how happy Simon was making her. I felt like somebody at the end of a long and damp night, where the rising sun starts to disperse the clinging misery of the fog and warm the ache from their bones.

“Don’t forget, I’m back to work tomorrow, so don’t be too noisy if you come home drunk, aye?”

“That, my dear, is something I no longer have need of. I trusted in the Lord, and He has done all that I prayed for. He has looked after me, too”

I nearly missed that little bit of sentiment, but it stayed with me. It was exactly how Miriam had always been; she looked after others, she put them first, and she screwed down tight her own despair. If there was a god, this surely was a just reward for her selflessness.

“Where are you eating tonight, Merry?”

“Er…in the pub behind the church. It’s convenient”

“Ah, leading you into sin and temptation, aye?”

That brought a megawatt grin. “No sin, love, but an awful lot of temptation!”

In the end, we were still up when she returned, and my own sleep was helped immeasurably by the happiness she radiated on entering the house.

Thank you, Simon.

With the schools about to close for the Summer holidays, or working through the exam season, I had returned to my old slot in Custody for a while, working alongside Den but really missing Kirsty, who was still off trying to turn a small baby into a little boy. Nothing had really changed, though I was of course using the ladies’ toilets and locker room rather than my old haunts. Nev was my first client of the day, this time with a cyclist, of all things.

“What you got, Nev?”

“Rode through two red lights, Sarge”

“Hardly arrestable, aye? So, what is he here for?”

“Refusing to give his details when required to do so. I witnessed the prisoner pass through one red traffic signal at the junction of Albert and Goff’s roads, and then through another red light at the pelican crossing thirty yards further on”

“Could you see both lights?”

Nev grinned. “Oh yes; I was on the crossing when he rode through it, it was me he rode into!”

I turned to the very obvious student type in front of me. Tight jeans, too tight for riding comfortably in, with the right leg rolled up. Slogan Tee, with a tartan shirt over the top.

“Nev, where’s his shoulder bag? And the fixie?”

“How do you know I got a fixie?”

I gave him my sweetest smile. “Fakengers always ride fixies. Stands to reason. Nowhere to hang a radio, so you’re no messenger. Now, why didn’t you give this nice officer your name?”

“Don’t have to, do I?”

“Well, yes you do?”

“Who says?”

“Parliament, by way of statute. Or, more simply, because it’s the law”

“Well, he couldn’t tell me which law, so it doesn’t apply, does it?”

“The law in question is the Road Traffic Act 1988, your original offence is under section 28 of that act, and your refusal to give your details is contrary to section 168. Got that? Nev, your concentration a little off?”

Nev grinned. “Something to do with lying on the ground with a bike on top of me, Sarge!”

Fakenger boy was still on form, though. “If he can’t tell me the law, he can’t use it!”

I sighed. “Son, just because you don’t know the atomic number of each of the elements that make up your bike doesn’t mean it falls apart when you sit on it, aye?”

“Well, ACTUALLY, the atomic numbers of….”

He would be a sodding chemistry student. I sent him off eventually so that Nev could do fingerprints, DNA and photos, and then he was outside the cell door losing his belt and his shoes.

“Why am I going in here?”

“Because you have committed a road traffic offence, and to further our investigations we need to know who you are. Inspector can’t bail you until we know we can find you again, aye?”

There was that awful crump of the closing cell door, and I realised Jim had been listening in.

“What do you say, boys? Er, sorry, Annie”

“Ah, I say forty minutes tops, aye?”

Nev shook his head. “Nope. Twenty at most. He’s too far up his own arse. First buzz in fifteen, twenty, demanding a brief, then five minutes later for his mum. Cuppa?”

Jim shook his head. “Just brewed some of my own, and you are going to see the quack. Look at your knee, Nev”

“Oh shit, they were new on today! Little bastard!”

I laughed. “Was he trying to leave when you collared him? From an injury accident? What section’s that, Nev?”

“Oh, don’t you two fucking start!”

In the end, he actually needed four stitches and a tetanus booster for the hole the chainring had left in his leg. The boy caved in after thirty-five minutes.

He had just left, with a formal caution instead of what could have been a rather heavy session before the Bench, and Jim and I were sipping mud together with the duty solicitor, swapping tales of barrack-room lawyers and saloon-bar coppers, when one of the support staff stuck her head into the Inspector’s broom cupboard.

“Sarge, there’s a phone call for you, a Steph Woodruff”

I felt my neck hairs quiver, as there was no reason for her to call me anywhere other than home. I was at the phone as quickly as possible.

“Steph?”

“Annie, can you come round? It’s Albert, he’s collapsed”