Chapter 1

First up I have to tell you that I am a copper through and through. Not only that but a detective. I had been in the force since I left school and it is ingrained into my psyche. My name, at birth, was Ethan Gerald Davis and you may surmise that I was born in Wales. I was born in Cardiff in 1986 and joined the force in 2005, after I had finished High School in Bristol, where my parents had moved because of my fathers’ work.

I had thought of other careers but found that I could not sing, nor could I act very well, and my size was against me in some other professions.
You see, I was, at that time, just on six feet tall and lanky with it. The kinder folk at school called me ‘beanstalk’, some called me ‘twiggy’, but the one that hurt most was ‘supermodel’ because most of my height was leg. I did do well at some sports, well, high jumping is a lot easier when you are taller than the bar and I was good on short distance running. All of these attributes stood me in good stead at the Police Training College where I did well in the physicals, well enough to offset some of my deficiencies in the academic subjects. I was good enough to graduate as a beat copper in Bristol and spent my days trying to keep the rowdier elements of our city in place, as well as trying to get a grip on the drug trafficking that took so many of our young to early deaths.

I was noted for my good reporting that led to several arrests by the detective division and found myself back at the College some evenings for further training. One of the things I excelled at was my shooting. So much so that the force decided that I needed to spend some time with the SAS to sharpen my skills and become proficient in looking after myself. This included an interesting course on withstanding deprivation and mind control. I discovered that the thing you need is to concentrate on just one thing that means the most to you as your old self and you would be able to ‘snap back’ when you were free again. Well, that’s how they termed it.

When I had completed the courses I was sent back to my old station where, believe it or not, there were no vacancies for an armed response officer. I was considered too valuable to be wasted back on the beat so they put me into the detective division as a Detective Constable. On my first day in that job my life changed dramatically as I fell in love. Well, it had to be a superior officer, Gwen Leeds, my sergeant, a girl on a fast track career who had some spectacular successes as a DC and so was not a lot older than me. The problem was, as I was quickly told by the other DC’s, she did not like men. I thought that it was such a waste as she was not only beautiful, clever and had legs to die for; she was also the same height as I was in her flats. I had always had problems with girls who did not like the fact that they only came up to my arm-pit, even wearing heels.

I did not let my unrequited love get me down; rather, I used it to keep my spirits up and to give me impetus to please her. I was able to solve some baffling cases, well, not so baffling if you know where cats get to when they are randy and where kids get to when they are bored. We had a few smash and grab cases on the go and Gwen and the DI were deep into a series of disappearances of young boys, all about nineteen. Usually, parents only bother with contacting us if the child is still happy at home but some of these kids had just vanished, even leaving their personal treasures.

Gwen and our DI were out following a lead one day when they came up against a rather angry man with a rifle. They had wanted to talk to the owners of a house where it was said a number of the missing boys had been seen before their disappearance and luckily had been standing on each side of the front door when a shotgun blast exited between them. I gathered that they had dashed back across the road where they sheltered behind their car and called for assistance. The Armed Response Squad was well over the other side of town in a stand-off with a domestic disturbance and hostages. As I was closer I called back to say I was on my way.

I parked in another street; put my bullet-proof vest on with the big POLICE sign on the front and back. I opened my secure boot and took out the assault rifle that I was allowed to carry with me and then made my way to where they were holed up. As I scuttled towards them behind cars that now had bullet holes in them and broken windows, I heard them call to him to give himself up, only to be answered by another blast from his shotgun that rocked their car. So that meant that he had at least two guns and would be considered a real danger. I put my radio on silent and put the bud in my ear so I could talk to my superiors without having to shout. The DI told me that the back-up was not coming and it was down to us before the uniformed arrived. He gave me permission to injure but not to kill.

As I lined up for a shot, a young girl dashed out from an alleyway next to the house and straight into the path of a truck that just happened to take this time to go by. The man in the house leaned out of the window and I put a round into his right shoulder and he staggered back inside the room. I could hear the DI calling up ambulances as I raced across the road, making sure there wasn’t anyone at the window. Gwen had got their battering ram out of their car and, as we reached the front door together, I added my momentum to hers and we went through that door like it wasn’t there. She ducked down as I quickly checked the immediate downstairs rooms and then went up to the next floor. I found the shooter in the front room, on the floor and quite dead and I called it in on the radio. There was an odd smell in the air.

I checked the other front rooms and then the two of us held our places until the uniforms arrived to help us clear the property. Gwen came up to join me and said “You didn’t have to kill him”. I told her I hadn’t and pointed out the bullet damage to his right shoulder only. She bent down and had a sniff of the odour I had first noticed and, when she stood up, said “I wonder why a normal crook has a suicide tooth?”

Back downstairs I led the clearance team through the house to a back door that was swinging open. It led to the passage where the girl had shot out of. We went down this passage to the road where there was a whole fleet of vehicles with flashing lights. The girl had already been put on a stretcher with a sheet fully covering her and the uniforms were interviewing a shaken driver. Gwen told the DI about the suicide pill and he ordered the clearance team out of the house and to secure it until the forensics team arrived. My part in it was over so I went back to my car, secured the rifle and took off the heavy vest. I sat in my car and made notes in my report book as it was still sharp in my mind and drove back to the station where I knew I would have to hand in my rifle for the investigation team to check. I signed out a fresh one and checked it over before putting it in my car.

Back in the office I sat at my desk to fill out my incident report and Gwen put her hand on my shoulder as she walked past, saying “Well done, back there, we certainly did the business on that door.” The next day saw the three of us in the chief inspectors office, relating our take on the events. The forensics team had confirmed that the shooter had suicided and the only thing I had to worry about was a discharge report. They had found the two long guns and a couple of pistols as well as a lot of evidence of drug use in the house. There were signs that the young girl may have lived there as one bedroom had clothing, make-up and personal items, including an ID that showed her as Betty Wade, aged nineteen. He told the others to get back to their own investigation and told me to follow up Betty Wade so that her parents could be notified.

Back at my computer I found that there were no signs of a Betty Wade. I tried Elizabeth and other variations but there was nothing close. The girl did not exist. I went down to the morgue where her body was stored and had a chat to the medical examiner. She told me that they had just checked the body to sign a death certificate as ‘Accidental Death’ as all of the boxes were already ticked; three coppers saw her death. I asked her to have another look while I was here and she pulled the body out of the cold room and a couple of orderlies lifted it up on the examination table. We both gowned up and she turned on the lights and recorder and proceeded to have a proper look.

“That’s strange” she said as she checked the torso, and then said “That’s even stranger” when she got to the groin area. She got the orderlies to put the body under the X-Ray machine and, when the films were developed, said “Good pick-up, Ethan. This girl has not always been a girl. The surgery was so good you would never see it but you cannot alter the bone structure, nor can you add the essential internal bits that women have.” I asked her if we could run a fingerprint set and a DNA swab. I knew that the fingerprints would be ready soon but the DNA result may be a couple of weeks to get back. In the meantime we wrapped Betty in a shroud and put her back into storage.

Marianne G 2020