CHAPTER 10
Adam was awake when I went back in the next day.

“Hiya, girl. Hope you got chocolate there!”

“You allowed, mate?”

“Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke, is what I say”

“Got a couple of bars of Bournville…”

He sighed happily as it melted on his tongue.

“Diane?”

“Yeah?”

“How much did you… When did you arrive?”

“Bryn and Barry got me out of the way, Adam, but, shit, I can…”

“Go on, girl. The smell? Is it the smell?”

I knew my voice was faint, but I couldn’t make it work any better than it was doing, just then.

“Yes. Exactly that. What happened, Adam?”

“Nicking fuel, girl. No, not like that job you got in the hair gel crew”

“You heard about that?”

He grinned. “Always keep an ear out for the new chums, see who’s going to watch their mate’s back as well as their own, aye?”

He frowned. “See those who don’t know a back needs watching at all. You are getting a reputation, Diane”

Again, he caught my expression, and quickly held up both hands, wincing.

“Shit! No, Di, not that sort of reputation. Clear sight, that’s you, aye? Seeing past the obvious? Anyway, fuel theft. They were siphoning it out of parked cars. Plastic containers all over the back seat…”

He drifted off, then came back with a visible jerk, tears hanging at the corners of his eyes.

“I got to the car after they knocked me off, aye? Kid in the back was smoking, I actually saw the rollie, joint, whatever? I saw it drop from his mouth…”

Abruptly, catastrophically, he broke, and I held him as best as I could, careful of his ribs, till he could speak again. I saw a nurse at the door, but she simply gave a wan smile and left us alone. I was beginning to see a pattern in all areas of what they call ‘the emergency services’, and it was all about tiredness. Not just bodily fatigue, but in failing reserves of all aspects of strength. Bryn and Barry had kept me away from the true depths of Adam’s horrors---how did they cope?

Adam was a little calmer now.

“Aye, rollie, or joint. Dropped into the fuel, or more likely what he had spilled on himself. Back of the car must have been thick with fumes, aye? Like a bloody bomb, it was, don’t know how far I was blown”

“Twelve, fifteen feet, mate”

“Ah, shit. I could see them, you know? Still see them in the car when it went up”

He paused, looking through me.

“Still see them sat there after it did, girl, before I blacked out. At least, that’s what I remember. Got a bit confusing after that”

“Not surprising, Adam. You cracked your lid against the wall you hit. Doctor says you had concussion”

He nodded, gingerly. “That explains a bit, aye? Anyway, lads OK? Who was it you said you were with?”

“Bryn and Barry”

“Sound lads. They’ll have done it right”

He started to laugh, almost a giggle.

“What?”

“Just thinking, Diane: when were these notes made, Officer? At the time? While you were airborne?”

The laughter turned into sobs again, and though I gave, and he took, the hug, I could feel he was actually wishing me gone, his fragile ego needing the space to drop the façade of strength and banter he was struggling to maintain. Remembering my own nausea and dizziness following a head injury, I simply left the big bag of mints on his side table and let myself out.

Bryn and Barry had been right about the need for a solid set of notes, as I found out during my interrogation by the Goon Squad a few days later. It really felt as if they were looking for someone to blame, anyone at all, as long as they were in a dark uniform with the word ‘Police’ on it. I will admit they got to me, really wriggled under my skin. I ended up doubting myself, the boys I had been with, even whether I wanted to stay in the job.

It was only the thoughts of a slight figure in a hospital bed that kept me plugging away. As soon as they had finished and scuttled off to whatever flat rock they lived under, Sammy had me into his office.

Door locked, mug of coffee in hand, he grilled me in his own way.

“They got to you, didn’t they? Got you doubting yourself?”

I just nodded, not sure I could speak in a safe way. If I started to talk I didn’t know if I would be able to hold myself to safe ground.

“Well, it’s over now. They will go back, compare their notes, and then they will stay the fuck away from my people. Bryn and Barry did the necessary, Diane. They got all the evidence they could find, all the photos. We’ve got Adam’s commentary, and there was enough footage recoverable from what was left of his bike to confirm it. Thank fuck for digital memory is what I say! Now, about you”

He steepled his fingers and looked over the tips at me.

“Couple of bad ones, I hear, Diane. They don’t come much tougher than that, so we are having you indoors for a bit. Some more training stuff, I am afraid, wrap up the last bits in a more relaxed way without operational pressures getting in the way”

“What you got in mind, boss?”

“There are a number of required modules you have to tick off, and we’ll fit in a fitness test, keep that ticket up to date. Then I want you to take a little time off”

“What for?”

“Decide which way you want to go, Diane”

That was too close to my thoughts about chucking the whole thing in, and it must have shown in my face, for he held up a hand.

“No, PC Owens, not like that. I don’t want to lose you, get that thought put away sharpish. I mean time for you to consider where you feel your career should take you. I suspect Traffic is not exactly sitting at the top of your list of choices, am I right?”

I had to grin at that one, of course, and he smiled back.

“Go on, do the courses, take some leave, and have a think. I may have something coming up shortly that could be right down your street”

We shook hands, and I was shown out the door.

Courses. Modules. E-learning shit. Gym tests—it was all so humdrum after the car chases and fights, but Sammy was right. It let me breathe, let me take a proper look at where I stood so that I could see more clearly where I could go. Adam was back within a week, and on light duties round the station, so I spent many hours with him the other side of a bacon sandwich or at the next terminal. It was a revelation for me, finding someone I could actually talk to in all senses, on any subject.

One day, he brought in some photos, of brilliant sunshine against snowy peaks, a bicycle covered in luggage centre stage.

“Thought you’d like to see what I do on my days off, Diane. This is the Tourmalet”

“Uh?”

“Pyrenees, aye? Tour I did a couple of years ago, Atlantic to Med”

“You rode that across those?”

“Er, yes. Gorgeous views up there”

“You rode a pushbike with half your house slung over it, across a load of bloody mountains? With snow on them? Are you barking?”

He just grinned. “Well, according to some. Maria says I am, at least. Don’t know if I’ll get her on a bike”

Oh shit and bollocks. My dreams crashed abruptly, so I clung to my smile and tone of voice.

“Maria?”

He blushed. “Er, yeah. Girlfriend. Lives over by London, aye?”

“What’s she like?”

“Oh, nice. Small, dark hair”

I realised he was trying to close the conversation down, or at least that subject, and binned the question I had been about to ask him: would he like to go for a drink or a meal some evening? I suspected he had guessed where I was going, and deliberately stalled me. Not stupid, was Adam. I kept my smile going and switched subjects.

“I’m off home for a week in ten days. Spend some time with the parents. Where are yours to?”

“Ah, I’m from up by Brynamman way. Mine, well, few years gone now”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry, mate”

“Na, not at all, Di. Just got no real ties over here now. Actually thinking of moving over by Maria, aye? Makes sense to me”

So much for a subject change. I steered it back to his injuries, and ten days later I was indeed back at the old house, once more in my own room, my own bed, and trying not to give too much detail of what I had seen, and smelled, one night in Morriston.

I actually felt refreshed when I got back to work. Not refreshed by the stay at home but rather by the fact of getting back to what I saw now as my real place in the world, and I saw how sharp Sammy was in his people management. He had me into his office a week after my return, seven days filled with more modules and manuals and, to my shock, Adam’s bloody departure. I cornered him at the bar where we were celebrating, if that was the word, his transfer to Sussex Constabulary.

“You kept that bloody quiet, mate! How about a bit more warning next time?”

Something was going on behind his smile, and I wondered, just for a moment, whether this Maria person had managed to get a bun growing in her small and dark-haired little oven before clamping down on my green-eyed thoughts and keeping it sweet for a friend. If I cared about him, surely I wanted to see him happy?

You bastard, Evans, you and all your fucking family. All I wanted to do was say to someone I really cared about that I did just that, really care, and I couldn’t, because all of the things other women learned they gained through experience and being bloody girls, through trial and error, and that bastard had ripped that away from me.

All I wanted to say to Adam was “Are you sure about this?” and “If it doesn’t work out, I’ll still be around” and what came out was “Do we get invitations to the stag night, mate?”

If I hadn’t hated the Evans family before that, by god I did afterwards.

Work felt odd for a while, without Adam about, but I kept at it and my probation was signed off by Sammy in a nice little ceremony in his office, Dai Gould in attendance, and I was let off the leash for a while as I double-crewed a number of pandas with a mix of mates, some closer than others. I was drifting a little, now, as I tried to make sense of my life once more, another potential anchor having been cut loose, when Sammy called me in again.

“Got a job for you, PC Owens. If you want it, that is”

“What’s the score?”

“Queer-bashing, girl. That’s what they call it, but we will refer to it as homophobic assaults, hate crime based on sexual orientation. You’ve had the diversity sessions, you know the words”

I remembered them well, with a blocky dyke copper and a really camp gay lad mincing about the room. Thoughts like that tickled me, especially with my memories of Bridget, and I grinned.

“What’s it we’re doing then, boss? Double-crewing all the gents’ toilets in the city?”

“Na, girl. Proper task force thingy, if that takes your fancy. Fresh team, CID bods mixed with people pulled off the beat. Civvies, of course, same as you did before”

He sighed, rubbing his nose, then looked at me again.

“Your best mate’s a lesbian, I got it right?”

“Er, yeah. Bridget. In Australia now. And before you ask, no I am not”

He nodded again. “I was wondering, but that’s not why they asked for you. Detail. You have an eye for it, and that’s where we need to go with this one. It is political, PC Owens, very direct words from above. The Pink Pound brings a lot of income into the city, and more of this sort of shit scares the punters away. Not good for business. You up for this?”

Long hours, absorbing work, no time to think of anything else? “Absolutely!”

“Monday morning, then. Nine sharp, front desk will have the room details once they’re sorted. See yourself out, Diane. Leave the door open”

I was halfway through it when he called “And thanks!” after me.

So, Monday morning, eight thirty, I was sitting in a conference room with a motley collection of other officers, Alun included, waiting for the off. Spot on nine o’clock, a familiar figure walked in, the chunky lesbian from the diversity sessions. She was so obviously a hard case, with a very direct, frightening stare, but then she grinned, and her face lit up.

“Gooood morning, boys and girls! Welcome to our little task force. My name is Inspector Powell, Elaine within these walls, Lainey if you ever get me down the pub. I will warn you now, don’t expect fixed shifts here. Vermin don’t work them, and it is vermin we are after. Anyone got a problem with that? No? Good. Now, who are you all, starting from you with the crap taste in ties?”