CHAPTER 8
“I beg your pardon?”

She wasn’t like that Sergeant, Kirst, Kirsty…I was having a little trouble keeping my thoughts straight. They had me on some pain-killer or other, and while it was seriously good shit, as my junkie friends might put it if I had any, I needed to keep my concentration to get this right.

“I said no statement. Do you know who exactly is behind this?”

She perked up just a little. “Well, as he walked into the nick and held his hands up, we have what could be called a reasonable suspicion”

“Let me tell you a story, then”

I took her through the not-so-intimate details of myself and Von, William, his sexuality, and that text from Nye. Once more she visibly sat up straighter.

“Have you kept the text?”

“Till this morning, aye, but I deleted it as soon as I did some thinking, like. Look, what actually is going on here? Miserable old fucker…sorry. Nasty old man, bigoted as all hell, aye, but he loves his grandbairn, and for what it’s worth, Will loves him, and after all, what’s he done to me that I didn’t want done anyway?”

Larinda bristled at that. “Kicked the shit out of you, yeah, put you in casualty instead of a proper doctor’s whatsits, that’s what. How the hell do you think I felt? You take this old bastard and you stick it to him, so far up his fucking arse….sorry, constable, bit upset”

The woman copper sighed. “Ah, sod it, I’m Tracy, he’s Blake. Think his parents were stuck on Dallas or something”

“Better than JR, yeah? Trace is right, sod the formality. Look, we see where you are coming from, but look at it from the wider angle: he’s come round, punched you out, kicked you hard enough for a GBH charge to stick, and gone into the nick with a grin so wide his head should have split. And then you…Miss, you say thank you very much, away you go home, no hard feelings. See it our way, if you can”

I nodded, the room moving slightly as I did but Larinda’s hand tight and steady on my own. “Aye, I can that, but you try and see it from where I am. There’s a young man round our house, blaming himself for everything. Push him too hard and he’ll break. Put his grandda in a cell, and he will do fuck knows what. There’s a family there, and wrong as he is, the old bugger thought he was protecting them”

Tracy leant forward. “And so he goes away feeling that he can do what he likes? He can kick a pervert in the head and get a medal”

Her head snapped to the right as Larinda started. “Sorry, but that is how he sees it. You are a perve, you made his boy a perve, this is how the world works. And what next? Where does he draw the line? Someone gets a kicking because they, I dunno, look at his azaleas the wrong way? I deal with people like him every day, Blake does, it’s our job, and they all have that attitude. Respect, they call it, and then someone ends up dead”

That other girl, Melanie, off the bridge…that was what Tracy meant. I felt the tears that had held back thus far start to push forward, begging to be set free.

“Look, I don’t know, aye? I just can’t wreck Will’s life. He’s got enough shit there already, and putting his bamps away would finish him”

Blake nodded. “I know, but you need to be aware that the CPS can still go ahead if they feel a charge could stick. You would still be called, still put in the box”

“And if I say no thank you, refuse to answer?”

They exchanged a look, and Tracy took the tag. “Rape victim, recently. Had all the usual problems, decided to withdraw the charge. Not only that, she claimed she’d made it up when she clearly hadn’t. Got jailed for it”

Larinda jerked. “You are taking the fucking piss!”

“Nope. Judge was a bit over the top, but I sort of see his point. Sort of. Miss Carter, you get called, you try and stay schtum, you will end up banged away for contempt. There’s too much evidence in the public domain already, what with your ambulance ride and his bit of triumphalism. Look…yeah, this is how. VIS, Blake?”

“Course, yeah. Miss Carter…”

“Jill”

“OK, Jill. Victim impact statement. Newish thing where the victim gets to speak to the court and say how shit they feel after the crime. You word it the right way, say what you have about the boy, yeah? The old bigot gets his club number but the judge should go light”

“Club number?”

“Criminal record. He’s a knob key at the mo, right, Trace?”

She winced. “Jill, knob key is a sort of code at our nick for people without CRO, a criminal record, club number. NBCY, yeah? Not been caught yet. Sorry; job makes you a bit cynical, but he has been caught, and he needs a short sharp whatsit to let him know. Look, we’ll clear off for a bit, but think on, please? The VIS, that might be your way forward on this one, cause I think our CPS are begging for a bit of hate-crime prosecution. Makes them feel trendy. Some of them might even take their ties off”

They were gone, just a piece of paper with their numbers on for a souvenir, and Larinda began her own attack.

“They are right, Jill. He walks away from this, what’s next? Will finds a fella and his old man comes round and shoots you? Fuck it, look at me: all I wanted was a nice bloke, and I found him, found the best in the world, but he wasn’t, so I ended up with the best girl in the world, yeah, and then I see how much shit I missed spotting. Told you: no escape, Carter. But we has to let him know, one way or the other, he do not touch my girl ever again. You think on. He’s gonna go for a guilty-but plea, I bet, and then there’ll be mitigation based on provocation and family love and---what? Bloody hell, lover, you know I do a lot of reading!”

She leant into me, her voice softening. “Lover, we need to let Will know that his bamps was wrong, all the way, but that it’s not his fault. He needs that day in court, he needs to be told he’s a cunt, yeah, but what that Trace says, that’s your job. You do your statement, and we sit down, you, me, Rachel, bloody Alec would be good, yeah, and Will, and we make our own speech. We…yeah, bloody hell, girl, WE, we make that old fart look so small, we take his bloody triumphalism away from him for us”

Suddenly she was laughing. “Jill, was gonna say something really stupid, yeah, Bout how you be the bigger man, yeah?”

Laughter of my own, followed by more tears. She held me like a child, and I knew, in the end, that she was right. Let him have his day in court, but on our terms.

I dozed again. I must have done, for the clock had moved, and there were food smells again from the corridor and a man with a white coat on by the bed.

“Good afternoon, Ms Carter. I am Dr Hussain, just here to have a quick check on the injuries. Would you like your friend to leave for a moment?”

“Fiancée, Doctor. No, she can stay”

“Good. Saves me calling a nurse round for modesty’s sake. Could you just pull those curtains round? Ta”

There was some gentle manipulation, and a lot of wincing from my woman, but he seemed reasonably happy, if that is the right word.

“Ms Carter, here is the state of play. You have suffered a quite serious concussion, clearly resulting from a blow to your head, but there is no fracture, for which God be thanked. That concussion may result in nausea and a sort of vertigo effect”

“I was sick a couple of times, and if by vertigo you mean the room moving around…”

He nodded. “Those will pass. Unfortunately…”

He shook his head. “You are a confusing case. Can I assume that what we had to remove was already on your surgical wish list?”

I nodded. “Yes indeed. I just, well, planned it in a slightly less painful way”

Larinda sniffed, but there was a twinkle in her eye. “Don’t worry about what I want, girl!”

The doctor sighed. “Can I assume you are intending full surgery for that matter? I ask this because if it is to take place more than a little while from now, you may wish to consider prostheses so as to keep the skin from atrophy. To leave your surgeon some…raw materials, yes?”

I shook my head. “Never wanted them, Doc, so I don’t want anything back. If I can get fixed soon, then yeah, I will. Just need signing off from the shrinks and then I will look at options”

He nodded. “Well, to be fair, you do seem to have more support than I normally see in such cases, if that is not speaking out of turn. We shall leave the…area to heal, then. It looks as fine as can be expected, and to be honest such a loss, surgically, is quite a minor thing. Do you have any budgie-smugglers?”

“You what?”

“Tight swimming trunks. When you begin healing properly, your penis will tend to pull at the wound unless it is constrained. Speedos or similar work well. Oh, and we will need to speak to your own doctor, of course, your GP. Do you have an endocrinologist? Your hormone balance will naturally have changed”

And so he went on, and it was all so matter of fact that I had to ask myself what else he had seen in his career to let him take me so easily in his stride, and then, just a very few days later, I was wheeled down the corridors and past groups of smokers to the car park, where John and Will were waiting to take me home.

Mates. Family. I started both my statement and the VIS the same afternoon.