CHAPTER 100
So once more our Christmas arrived, and we ended up at The Usual Suspect’s, where I spent the first half of the evening watching Frank and Marlene dance around each other. It had taken a while for me to tease out what the details of their disengagement were, but in the end it was a simple story: Marlene had been crapped on by her family, and how I understood that, and Frank had been too young to see what that really involved.

All he had done… I had stopped myself when that phrase rolled through my thoughts, because it covered so many acts that had started out as a small thing, and then morphed, grown like a tumour. That driver near Bridgend had almost been one of them, and I was still asking myself what was the ‘all’ she had just ‘done’: looked at her phone? Turned her head to speak to kids in the back seat? Lit a cigarette?

The history between Frank and his cousin had led to more than a few late-night discussions, the sort where you lie wrapped up with a partner and just need to get the words out to stop the thoughts dancing you away from sleep, and of course one thing turned into another, and his juvenile silliness about Marlene was tied to how he felt about me.

“One thing I have learned, love, is that I can be really, really thick. Did it with Myron, didn’t I? Same with you”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Steep bloody learning curve, wasn’t it? Sure it happens to lots of people, I am”

He held me tighter as we lay in the darkness, once again in my own room, the girls having laid down the rules very, very firmly: as longas we had no new girls to worry about, I lived my life properly.

Frank was in a pensive mood.

“You have to understand, love. Mam and Dad, aye? Whole family, it was: daily paper was the Sun or the Express, though Uncle Ivor always took the Mail, with my parents getting both the News of the World and the Express at weekends. That’s what I grew up with, Debbie. How I thought the world was, till I was out in it, and I crapped all over Myron, just following the crowd, the Right Thoughts shit. If I’d known, back then, what you… No. Wring words”

“What words were they going to be, Frank?”

He sighed, his chest rising a long way under my head before he let it sink once more.

“I was going to say ‘what you are’, love, but that’s not right. I know WHO you are, and that is all I need. Yes, I had mixed thoughts when I found out, but really, it’s like Mahvash, has that corner shop, she does”

“She? I met a man that evening, not a woman”

He actually laughed just then, a little of his tension eased.

“That was her hubby, love. Power behind the throne, she is! Anyway, Mam would have had all sorts of things to say about wogs and Pakis, and I was just the same, and then I started meeting my own wogs, and all those other stupid bloody words, and it’s like a light coming on. Made it easier with you, aye?”

Another deep sigh.

“That was what really stung me, Debbie. Done my learning, hadn’t I? About real people, not what the papers say? All I could see when I read about you, all I could think, was ‘look what I lost’. Then in you walk, with another girl like you, and shit, there’s my chance to make things up, atone, isn’t it?”

He laughed softly.

“Sounding a bit stalkerish, aren’t I?”

“No, love. Just sounding a bit real. Now, you said ‘stalker’, yeah?”

“Yeah?”

“I think there’s a stalk growing… ooh, there is”

Conversation ended the nicest way possible.

Into the Smuggler’s on Christmas Eve, taxis of both sorts booked, both Dad and commercial, and we let rip as if we had never been away. Diane’s team were there, despite her absence, and I sat for a while watching the dynamics as they drank and danced, bantered and bickered, grins flashing, the shot girl mobbed by a crowd of my girls eager to see how she was and to embarrass the skinny girl she had been swapping saliva with when we had arrived. Frank spent a great deal of time mending bridges with Marlene, which gratified me, and I ended up in a corner with Inspector Patel and young Jon. There were new lines on the boy’s face, and while his boss still flashed what was clearly his trademark grin, the spark was fading.

“You two okay? Bit quieter than normal. That cause Diane’s away?”

Jon snorted.

“Woman’s daft enough to spend Christmas in a tent, she’d ruin this one. Nope. Just been a long, hard year. It’ll get better, though. I mean…”

He tailed off, and Patel shot him a quick look before turning to me.

“I think Jonny Boy was going to make a less than subtle comment about the not-so-dear departed, but I will do the managerial thing and turn it around. You look sorted, woman. He being good to you?”

I nodded, and he looked over to the bar, where Marlene and Frank were sharing bits of conversation in the gaps between Marlene’s snarky abuse of her customers.
“Yes, I know who he is, and what they are to each other. Been coming in here enough years for work”
“Yes. I remember you, not long after I moved down here”

He nodded.

“All part of my ‘wider education to enhance my competencies for onward career progression’ and other management bullshit bingo. Jonny Boy, do us all a favour and go and see that Alun’s okay for a few minutes?”

The lad stared hard at Patel, then simply nodded before heading off towards his team. Patel turned his eyes to mine, and simply sagged as he sat.

“My name is Sammy, Debbie. Feel free, okay?”

“Okay, Sammy. What the fuck is up?”

“Oh, no details, aye? I just, well, had a few, need to vent, and I know exactly how close you are to the Suttons, as well as to the fresh meat I just sent away. No details, but hoping for a few ideas from someone who seems to be good at picking up decent people who have fallen down”

He waved vaguely at Kim, who was clearly doing her best to embarrass both Seb and Jake.

“I spent some time looking for Barry John Norley when I was still young and stupid, before I realised that his Dad didn’t really give a fuck about finding the kid. I watched you when you took her in, and I kept an eye on that café, just in case, but I gather you had other resources available when that arsehole came visiting. Don’t need to know, isn’t it?”

He took a slow mouthful from his pint.

“All you need to know here is that my team are in need of someone like you. We have had a couple of really shitty jobs, and yes, thank your girls for being there for Lexie. I was shitting myself, but I can’t say to that lot things I can say to you. And we have another heavy one on, which I think is going to get really, really nasty, and speaking as a caring, sharing, concerned modern manager of personnel and other bollocks, but mostly as a human being, I do not want some people I regard as family crashing and fucking well burning”

Another pause, as he looked at me over the rim of his glass.

“Not asking for too much, Debbie. Just some ideas, the sort you seem to do well. Something to get them out of the city, once this load of shit is put to bed. Sort of thing you do so well”

He grinned, suddenly and dazzlingly.

“Just without any bloody motorbikes, okay? Right, off to move and shake and wind up Lexie!”

Off he went, with a squeeze of my shoulder, and my heart went with him.

New Year went as well as could be expected, said a spokeswoman for the euphemistic. The salient memory I had was from the morning after, as Frank struggled to comprehend exactly how he had been able to arrive at possession of what must have been the finest hangover available to humanity, as well as the realisation that while Rosie had been fierce in her protection of him at the Welsh Coast, that had been from strangers, and it had been his adopted family who had left him with a certain four letter word written backwards across his forehead in marker pen, which he discovered when he went to clean an inch of furry gunge from his teeth. Served him right for falling asleep in the bar.

Sammy’s words came back to me when Rosie took me aside before the evening got properly underway.

“Seen that copper of yours? The hard bitch?”

“Di? She’s been over in England”

“Ah. I need a word with her, off record, like”

“About?”

Rosie stared hard at me, and I could see hatred boiling behind her eyes.

“What I said to you a while back, about her being on the edge. She and her mates have been running a watch on a bunch of people I. Do. Not. Like”

She sagged, shaking her head.

“Carling knew about them, and if, well… No. Not now. Done. Bunch of cunts up in Merthyr, aye? Your copper has been eyes on, her and her team, for months. I think they might appreciate a hand, so I will give you a call in about a week. Just need a couple of things from you”

“And they are?”

“Bring her to a meeting on her own”

“A couple of things, you said”

Rosie grinned, far more cheerfully.

“And a box of pastries from Gemma when we meet! I’ll bring the hot chocolate!”

In the end, we got what was left of Frank home safely, and I waited until four days into New Year before I made the call.

“Hello, sh’mae, Plas Y Brenin, Enfys speaking”