CHAPTER 2
I had no quick, amusing comeback to that particular little hand-grenade. I didn’t know much about the disease, but I had seen more than enough of its victims, and my memories of them left me with no illusions as to Lynne’s future. Poor bloody Alun; my opinion of his morals had turned such a somersault it was probably being greeted by people holding up score cards.

“Talk to me, mate. What we can do, like. What you need. Shit, you do know if the team heard, they’d do their best—we’d do our best to buy you a sodding chair!”

“I don’t like to impose, Di”

“Oh for fuck’s sake! What are we if not a bloody team?”

“Yeah, but---ˮ

“No but, butt! We sort this as a team. What exactly do you think Lainey would say?”

He grinned, which was better.

“Probably something about ‘boys and girls’, I think”

“Absolutely! What are we if not mates?”

I thought it through for a second. “Alun, just the one thing, and that’s an obvious one: who else knows so far? I mean, after a while, especially if she needs the wheels now, it’s going to be something even the thickest PCSO won’t be able to miss”

“Ah, just her Dad but, well, he’s not with us that often these days”

“Eh?”

“Early onset Alzheimer’s. Not the best family health record, is it, what with her Mam gone early? Wish I’d known before we got wed, I’d have called it off”

“No you bloody wouldn’t!”

He grinned again, which was even better.

“Alun, mate, had a thought. I was talking to Annie again last week, about Stuff, and we got onto how it was for her at work”

He squinted a little. “You not find that a bit awkward?”

I actually stopped to think at that comment. He was spot on, of course, but not actually right. Talking with her would always bring a little flood-tide of memories, but with my husband beside me and, more importantly, her own husband with Annie, it got easier. That phone call; that unexpected collision in Elaine’s front room—they had thrown me completely off my stride, but one thing the Job had taught me was balance. Not as in fairness, as I hoped I held to that naturally, but in footing, in stance. Our whacking and walloping courses stressed the importance of stance, foot position, centre of mass and so on, but the actual process of policing forced each of us to find a mental equivalent. Hand me a surprise, and I’ll deal with it, saving the ‘WTF?’ for a later, safer moment.

“Alun, what do you think? Really? Awkward as all hell, innit, at first? But she grows on you. You see her often enough and she’s just THERE, just so right in her skin. Don’t know how none of us ever spotted it while she was still over here. Anyway, not about her. Well, it is, in a way. She had to come out at work, just like you’re going to have to about Lynne, and the way she told it to me was all about control. About choosing what information came out, how it came out and when. You stop the rumours before they start, and you give out the facts you want to on your terms. That’s what she says she did”

“That work for her?”

“Well, up until the tabloids got her coming out of a trial in a skirt, but yeah. We need to decide how we’re going to do this”

“And who is ‘we’, Di?”

“Me, you and Lynne, for starters, mate. And I would really suggest you talk to Cerys, get her on side”

He was looking uncertain, so I squeezed his arm. “Mates, Alun. Team. Never alone, yeah? Now, let’s get out of this shithole and clear the paperwork”

It was a long drive down the A470, mostly in silence, but he started to open up a bit as we got closer to the M4. It was noise, mostly, filler about Chris and his wedding, stupid stag night suggestions and so on, punctuated by the whap-whap of the wiper blades clearing the windscreen and the steady whisper of the hot-air blowers fighting the damp and the chill. There seemed to be nothing outside the car in the gloom, nothing but a little piece of road illuminated in front of us, until we hit the streetlights again and the traffic started to build up.

Into the yard, the gate shutting behind us, and up to the team room after a stop at the greasy to pick up a cuppa and a ‘sod it I’ll have a’ sausage sandwich. We did the logs, we wrote up the file, and I made the calls to Dover Customs via the appropriate data-protection gateways, Your Honour, and no surprises were had there, apart from in the reaction of the lad at the other end of the phone.

“Bloody South Wales? What the hell are they doing out there?”

“What’s the problem?”

“State of the vehicles, usually, Miss”

“Di”

“Ta. I’m Ross. No, they have a really shit-state set of vans, that lot. Was the suspension jiggered at the back?”

“Yeah, couple of scaffolding poles through the springs”

“That’s normal for them, that or some wooden blocks. If you’d been able to check the tyres, they’d probably be massively over-pressure. Lets them overload the vans, three or four times max, without them looking obviously illegal, so they can max the profits from each run. You ought to see them when they pull away—almost pop a wheelie”

“Now I know this is going to sound naïve, but, well, MOT and insurance? They’d never get through a roadworthiness test, and without the MOT---”

He interrupted me. “They’d not have insurance, yeah? Next question?”

“Ah. Licences?”

He laughed. “If you’re lucky. Mate of mine, he used to work at the Tunnel, told me he had one lot of Volvo estates, six of them, years ago, and every single one had the same tax disc, just photocopied with a different registration number written in. He had another, a cut and shut, where the front and back halves still had their old number plates on. Different numbers front and back! That one, the only working brake was the handbrake”

“How the hell do they get away with driving those on our roads?”

“How many traffic officers has your force lost?”

“Ah. Yeah. So, what we got?”

“Um… Right. I’ve just sent you a screenshot of the vehicle’s travel, and I’m printing off the list of named drivers. The OCG is based in---”

“Organised Crime Gang?”

“Yup. Based in a lovely sink estate in Ashford in Kent. Two main families, plus hangers-on. Names you will be looking at are Crellin, Finch, Warren and Gurbuz”

“Sorry?”

He spelled out the last name. “One of Billy Crellin’s girls took up with the son of the local kebab-shop emperor. Not going to say ‘nasty piece of work, because they all are, and Cheyenne is just as unpleasant as her other half. Now, back to my original question: what are they doing in South Wales, or can’t you tell me?”

"Well, you are right there, but no big secret in that I believe they are supplying booze to an illegal establishment. Sorry, but no specifics”

“Want them targeted?”

“No, not yet. I’ll let you know what we get when I can, OK?”

“That will have to do, then. Oh, don’t bother putting the reg numbers through PNC—they only bought the van yesterday”

“What? How do you know it’s theirs, then?”

“No. Every time they’re asked, they’ve only EVER just bought the van. They don’t register them”

I said the polite things, and gave him the details he needed for the post, and finished the call. How the hell had we got into a situation where such criminality, such arrogant law-breaking, went unchecked? I had a vision of one of those vans crashing on the M4 at speed, tyres ready to explode, no working brakes, three times the safe load, no insurance, no licence…

Too close to what I knew Annie had been through. Job head back on, girl. Get the case notes done and get off home.

The house was in darkness, but I used the light on my phone to see me up the stairs after shutting the front door as quietly as I could manage. My little treasure was safely asleep, and I just stood watching him there, before closing the door halfway. I undressed as quietly as I could and slipped into my own bed, our bed, with my husband, who grunted and twisted just enough to pull me into a warming cuddle.

Sleep was some time away, because I couldn’t stop thinking of Alun.

Alun; and Ashley Evans.