CHAPTER 49
My alarm’s tone was slow to permeate my consciousness, or, to put it more simply, my body was in a state of denial. Loud buzzing? Na. I’m asleep. Staying that way. Which is why, ever since the second day of working shifts, I put the damned thing well out of reach.

The light was showing around the edges of the heavy curtains I had bought after my first set of night shifts, and I knew it was really time to get moving, but there was a bloody great arm across me.

Rewind. Blake’s arm.

I couldn’t help it, and the tears came. The alarm, still beeping away, had clearly woken him as well, and I can only guess he felt the catch of a sob in my body.

“Di? Love? I didn’t hurt you last night, did !?”

I pulled his arm to me as I pushed myself back into his embrace, remembering how slow, how gentle…

“Sorry. Just putting everything together, what with what Sammy said and that, and realising it’s not over, not really”

I felt him tense, and pulled his arm even tighter around me

“No, Blake, not like that. It’s all cliché stuff. One door closes, another opens. I mean, what Sammy said, doors shut on them, all that stuff. Please don’t tell me I’m being silly, but all I have had in my life has been trying to get back at those three shits, and bang, it’s done. And it’s all past stuff, things that have happened, done and dusted and gone. I never really had anything in front of me, it was always a push from behind”

“And now?”

Typical of him to leave it hanging like that, but there was more, and so I turned in his arms so that I could see his eyes and the worry in them, and tried to soothe it away with a smile.

“Not like you are thinking, love. It’s a future I see now, isn’t it?”

I let that sit for a second before adding “With you, if you want”

He kissed me, all morning breath and stubble, and it was al the answer either of us needed.

The cheeky bugger still grabbed the shower before me as I crossed the room to shut the bloody clock off. I spent my time in the shower singing.

Candice was waiting for us, ostentatiously looking at her watch and tapping her foot, which set me blushing and her laughing, but her first hug was for Blake, and she gave him a little whispered warning he later relayed to me.

“Hurt her, and I will kill you”

Standing quietly behind her, looking a little nonplussed, was a young man in a leather jacket, Candice turned and beckoned him forward.

“DCs Di Owens and Blake Sutton, this is Jon Philips, a new chum. Sammy’s sending him along to do the heavy lifting with the files and stuff”

“I thought that was my job, woman!”

“Na, leave that to the youngsters. You’ve just got the sweetness and light job for Ashley, Dai and Bob. Very important, that bit”

I looked at the young man, trying to get a feel for him. Jon not son, Jon not son, you’re not that old, DC Owens.

“You know what today’s job entails. Jon?”

“Er, I got some bits and pieces through the grapevine, but not all of it”

“Well, it’s part of this team’s role. We sorted a case involving a series of assaults and rapes, and then we decided to see what else our friends had done. That gives us a raft of further charges to hand out, but this raft isn’t going to do any bloody floating, if you catch my drift”

He smiled, and I liked him immediately. “This be the men who did over all those twinks?”

“Oh yes indeed. You know that story?”

“Been all round the village---er, yes, I am. Sorry if that causes problems”

Candice snorted. “Given who started this team, I hardly bloody think so! Anyway, Jonny boy, there’s more than that. Two of them are also to be charged with other rapes, this time of very young girls. We haven’t told them why we’re coming, just getting them to Cardiff Central Nick for the day. I am very much looking forward to seeing their faces again, just this once. Di, Blake? I’ve got the X5 booked out, so plenty of room. You want to drive, mate?”

Blake nodded, and she handed him the pouch with the vehicle log and keys, turning back to the young lad.

“He’s a proper driver, Jonny boy. Watch and learn, aye? We offski then, you two?”

It’s not that far from our base in James Street to the Central Nick, and I was able to sort a few things out with the Office Blonde, in particular why we were doing this particular job in a police station rather than at the prison. She laughed happily.

“Girl, you know what a sadistic bastard he can be?”

“Yeah, course”

“Well, just felt they’ll have settled into the prison by now. Sort of at home, especially on the nonce wing, and he wants them to be as fucking uncomfortable as possible. Sod what the courts give them, he wants them to HURT. Jonny Boy, that is why they will be charged sequentially for each rape and assault rather than each one getting all his charges in one go”

She turned back to me. “Hansen, Jamie Evans, Pritchard, Bob Evans. Bastard Senior can sit and wait for all of it to be done, and then it’ll be his turn”

The boy was smiling. “I like his style! Who’s doing what?”

She held a finger up to my lips. “Blake and me, tag-teaming each one. Little Miss Sunshine here for public gloating. You for enigmatic face-memorising and headfucking duties. Got that one?”

He laughed, happily. “I really do think I’ll like this team!”

Round the back of the Central, park up and in, with a quick word of explanation to the Custody Sergeant, who said he had a number of briefs outside, called in from the duty solicitor list. No expensive suit today, Ashley? Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

I was beginning to think in bloody catch phrases. Bugger.

Hansen was first in, and I had the full sunlight and sugar smile waiting, as the first charge was laid, and to my delighted surprise ‘Jonny Boy’ had exactly the right expression of silent threat and face-memorising to bounce Hansen away from any balance he may have managed to find.

Jamie Evans, who cast his eyes all over the room, I assume trying to spot Elaine.

Bob Evans, who got the full force of my own smile while trying to stay as far away from me as he could but still had to stand by the desk.

Pritchard, and back to Hansen, and round and round. Halfway through the parade, one of the briefs asked Candice why we simply didn’t charge each one of them with all his alleged offences at once.

“Oh, I am terribly sorry, but that’s just how the files were stacked when I picked them up in the office. I mean, as you can see, I am blonde, and I didn’t want to risk a Blonde Moment and miss one. We’ll just work through them steadily, and that’ll be it, sir”

Pritchard, again, for the last of the assaults on young men, and Candice was utterly evil in how she did it. The last of that suite of charges laid, Pritchard had turned to walk off with his brief when she purred, “Oh, one more thing, Mr Pritchard!”

He turned back to her, looking puzzled, and I saw the lawyer’s shoulders sag as he recognised what her sharp little smile and new bundle of papers suggested. She rattled through the dates and place and times, and then:

“…you are charged on each occasion with the rape of a child under fifteen years of age, being Thomas Wesley Black, known as Tiffany”

The brief’s eyes closed at that, Jon’s own eyes boring into Pritchard’s, and I stepped forward to say my little piece. Sweetness, light and fucking hatred in every syllable.

“That is right, Dai. It’s funny how the past catches up with you, isn’t it? Sometimes we have to wait a while, but patience is such a virtue, don’t you agree? You can go, for now. I am sure the nice man here will want to see what your intentions are for the Plea and Direction Hearing. We’ll see you there”

Utter terror was there for the first time. I had seen him in fear, as well as in arrogance, but behind the fear, just this once, was despair.

I turned back to the Custody Sergeant, deliberately looking away from Pritchard’s departure.

“Can we have Ashley Aaron Evans now, please?”

The big man came in with a uniformed lad, and I turned to give him one of those utterly insincere smiles.

“Hello once again, Councillor Evans! This may take a little while; did you perhaps wish to use the toilet before we begin? Ease your bladder, perhaps?”

Oh yes, you remember me now you piece of filth, and now I know, really know that there are men, real men, in this world, in this room, men who show you up for what you are…

Wind it in, DC Owens. Police, Professional. Don’t overstep.

“My colleagues have something to put to you, MISTER Evans. Officer Sutton?”

Once again, the charges were laid, and they were grievous bodily harm and “the rape of a child under fourteen years of age, being Charlton Dilwyn Surtees, also known as Charlotte”

He turned back to me, face red.

“Who the fuck are you talking about, you little whore? Yes, I remember you! Loved every minute of it, didn’t you?”

The brief was quickly at him.

“Mr Evans! Please stop. Audio and visual recording, and you have been cautioned!”

“Oh, piss off! Fucking conspiracy, the whole thing! Who the fuck is Charlton Surtees?”

Candice pulled me back, but gently.

“She is a very brave transgender girl, Evans. She was thirteen at the time you attacked her. I am sure you will remember her when you are in front of a jury again, but I suggest you follow the advice of your legal advisor here, and consider the wisdom of making any further such remarks. Oh: one more thing”

She nodded to the Uniform, who started to lead Evans away, and as he was going through the door, in her sweetest voice, “As you see, our enquiries continue, Mr Evans”

The door slammed, and the Sergeant turned to us.

“I think I need a cuppa. You lot as well”

We followed him through the door into the main part of the nick, and he led us up to their own Greasy, where he bought a round of teas and got straight to the point.

“You are the lot who caught those sods for all the other stuff, aren’t you?”

We all nodded, even Jon, the cheeky so and so.

“I thought so, but there was a lot more going on there. What was all the extra chat about?”

Blake looked at me for permission, but I shook my head. My turn, my life, my responsibility.

“It was something that came out in my trial”

I caught the Sergeant’s puzzled expression, and held up a hand.

“No, not me on trial, Ashley Evans. I was someone he had raped. I was sixteen”

“Sodding hell! No wonder he didn’t like you!”

“Yup. And Pritchard and Bob Evans were along for a bit of perverting the course. That reminds me. Candice? Charlie’s visit? In hospital?”

“Awaiting CPS, Di. And the other arrests”

“Ta! I did wonder. Anyway, Sarge---”

“Kieran”

“Ta! Anyway, Kieran, it was something I saw in his face at, well, MY trial: puzzlement. He knew who I was today, because I banged him away, but during the trial it was all sort of ‘Which one was that, then?’. As if there were more, and he was trying to place me from a list of victims. Charlie’s the first one so far to come forward. I really expect more”

He reached across the table to shake my hand.

“Thank you. Thank you all. Sometimes it is worthwhile doing this job. Not often, aye? But today, oh yes indeed”

Print-outs collected, notebooks completed, and back to James St, Jon so quiet in the back of the Beemer. Eventually, though, he found his voice.

“Di?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you always that bloody frightening?”

The other two laughed, and Blake just called over his shoulder, “She had a bloody good teacher, Jon! If our old boss had been there, they’d have been mopping up piss all day! Reminds me, love. Er, Di? We need to see what’s happening with the other little shit. He may be excused sharp things right now, but he still needs putting in the frame”

Neither Candice nor Jon missed his slip, and as I took the risk to squeeze his thigh, our Office Blonde reached across the seat back to stroke my cheek with real affection, before turning back to the new chum.

“Jonny Boy? New Chum? How are you at organising stag and hen nights?”

He laughed, and once again I felt that he might just fit very nicely into our little family.

“Depends on how Pink you like them, Candice!”

Life was good, and getting better.

“Blake, LOVE? Drop these troublemakers off and go and see Deb?”

“Yeah, let the new boy learn about the paperwork, aye?”

“Oh yes indeed”

We did indeed drop them off, and collected Blake’s car for a drive out to the safe house, and on the way, just on the off-chance, you understand, I took him past some estate agents.

If I could help it, that morning’s waking would be the pattern for my future.