CHAPTER 16
That one hit hard, and I remembered some of the things Dai Gould had stressed. Always look beyond the immediate, beyond those shouting the loudest. That advice on our first aid courses: the one screaming is the one who has the strength and the breath, the life, to be able to scream. Look to the quiet ones. Look at how the ripples spread.

I rang in to let the boss know where we were with the case, and she dropped the bombshell.

“Di, pause for a second, aye?”

“Yes, ma’am”

“The victim. You know Dai Gould, I believe”

“Yes indeed. One of my mentors”

“The victim was his nephew’s partner”

I felt the room spin. Room mate? Did Dai know me that badly?

“Fuck. Sorry, ma’am”

“Not at all, girl. Now, SOCO done their bit? Any issues?”

“One of the locals been a bit of a twat, but no, all fine so far. I think SOCO have gone a bit above and beyond”

“I suspect Dai let them know who was involved. They’re reporting straight to the team. Look, we’ve done all we can today, and the lad is out for the count. You and Blake go home, aye? Bright and early, nice and fresh; see if we can’t get this rolling. Alun’s still on the tats, we’ve got good stuff now. Go home. Fresh tomorrow, and remember what I said: you’ll do your best thinking when you are half asleep”

I had no argument with that one, so I rounded up Blake and Warren, SOCO and his ferret long gone, and under the hard gaze of the hotel woman we made our exit. Blake drove me steadily and smoothly, as ever, until I realised we were heading the wrong way.

“Mate? My car’s at the nick”

“You are not driving home after this, Di. I’ll pick you up tomorrow”

I wanted to argue, but in the end all I said was “You sure?”

“Yeah. Not a problem. Gives us a chance to get everything straight before we see the gorgon tomorrow”

“Gorgon? Elaine?”

“Bloody frightening woman, Di”

“Bloody good copper, Blake!”

Another quick glance at me. “Yeah, I’ll give you that one, but I’m not getting on her wrong side, girl”

He kept his eyes on the road, but talked quietly.

“Whatever happened to you, Di, not my business, is it? But you ever want to talk, I can listen. I’m not dealing with this case easily, and a different focus, aye? Makes it easier”

“You don’t like the gay stuff?

I saw his jaw muscles clench. “No, Di, not that. Just try and get this sorted: I know what I look like, I know what people assume, but I do this job for the right reasons, yeah? Protect and fucking serve, and some pieces of shit need fucking well serving. Don’t make assumptions”

“Shit. Sorry. Didn’t realise you were gay, mate”

He laughed out loud at that one.

“Straight, girl. Just honest. Remember that, OK? Now, where’s home?”

I directed him through Barry’s back streets, sending a quick warning text to Mam. On way home with company.

I was never one for text speak. She opened the door as we pulled up, and I saw her give him the once over.

“Mam? This is Blake Sutton, one of the team. We’ve had a busy one today, out on a job, so he’s given me a lift home. Pick me up in the morning for work”

“You two eaten?”

“Place we were at did us some sandwiches, but no, not really”

“You got time to eat with us, son? Dad’ll be home in an hour. Nothing special to offer you, just stew and mash”

The big man smiled. “Ta, Mrs Owens. That would be lovely. Just got a cat, back at mine, and I have a clockwork feeder thing just in case I’m late back”

She took us into the kitchen, rather than the front room, and stared at his shoes. Ah. I took mine off with a touch of embarrassment.

“Sorry, Mam. Out in the sticks today; hadn’t realised they’d got so dirty”

Two of us pulled off our footwear, and I had to hide a need to giggle as Blake was clearly trying to smell if his shoes and socks were in any way aromatic. That, more than his comments about his pet, told me absolutely that he lived alone.

We made small talk for a while, or rather Mam grilled him mercilessly about his home life, schooling, friends, family---I half expected her to start pulling out my childhood photos! We were saved by the bang of the front door, and Dad came in, and just like Mam he fixed Blake with his gaze almost as if tracking a target. Mam broke the silence.

“This is Blake, love. He works with our girl; had a heavy day today and he’s run her home rather than go all the way into the city and back. Tea will be ready in half an hour”

“Kettle warm?”

“I’ll do you a cup. You get comfortable”

He was back in five minutes, changed into a casual shirt, and once more Blake got the third degree.

“I was working the beat in Bridgend. New stuff for me, this work. Don’t know if I’m really up to it, to be honest. Di, now, she’s spot on”

I felt my face growing warm. “Don’t be daft, mate”

“No. I’m not. Mr Owens, we’re working on some very nasty stuff, things that would turn your stomach, aye? Diane here has just the right touch. Knows when to coax, knows when to slap down”

He turned to me with a grin. “You should have seen the face of that tosser—sorry! That idiot in the house whose fortune you told. Think you scared him out of a year’s growth”

He turned back to my parents. “That’s the thing in this job, knowing when to smile and when to do things another way. One of our other colleagues, Rob, he says she is great at the fluffy stuff as well. Not many of us can do both, Mr Owens”

Dad nodded. “Mark and Dorothy, son. Nice to meet you. Call her Dot, we do”

That came with a smile, and as guards were lowered, and Mam served the stew whose fragrance had been tugging at me since we first entered the kitchen. We kept the conversation away from work, although Blake did drop in a few of his more amusing anecdotes, while I gave back some of the sillier moments I had witnessed, particularly in my short stint with Traffic.

Blake winced at that one. “I couldn’t do that job, Di. Had to attend a few RTCs, a couple of fatals. Doing something like that, every day, well, don’t know how the lads in Traffic cope. There was one…”

He looked away for a few seconds before continuing.

“Crash out to the West, on the Pontarddulais Road, down from the M4, and it was a bad one. One fatality, and it was a baby. That’s all I want to say about it, but there was one of the Traffic lads there, and he just broke down. Sat by the road, helmet off, sobbing. I couldn’t do that job, not day after day, without being like that at every crash site. Heard the poor lad got rammed off his bike not that long afterwards”

I sat up straighter. “You knew Adam Price?”

Blake’s stare went straight through me, and I realised he was weighing me up as well as his next words.

“Yup. He’s gone off to England now, got married to some English girl”

“Maria”

“You know him as well?”

“Yes. Did some hospital visits after that ramming case. And, well, I was at the scene. My two mates, Traffic lads, they kept me well away from it. No, Mam. No more details, not over tea”

Blake nodded. “Yeah, I heard a lot about that one. Tell you what, though, I was surprised he got married. Always thought he was gay. Shows what a crap judge of character I am. Well, except about you, girl!”

Mam laughed at that one, breaking the mood.

“What’s this boss of yours like, then?”

He grinned. “Mover and shaker, Dot. I really think that when she sets her mind to something, it gets done. I like her”

I snorted. “You said she scares you!”

“Well that too. A proper copper, she is. I’ll do my best not to get on her bad side”

The mood was getting warmer with each smile, and after some fruit yoghurts mam had saved for afters we settled down in the front room, Blake and Dad in the armchairs while I cwtched up with Mam on the settee, but in the end Blake had to get home to sort cat and flat, and three of us waved him off from the front porch.

Dad was smiling.

“Nice lad, Di. You watch his back for him”

Blake was back nice and early the next morning, and once again the drive was smooth, controlled and as quick as the law allowed. I had been thinking as I ate my breakfast, and something had jumped out at me.

Elaine hadn’t said the SOCO would be reporting to her, but to the team. That said things to me about her attitude, and together with Blake’s praise of me to my parents I arrived at the team room with a resolution to do my best for her and the team. This was one of the reasons I was in the job, after all. The two others could wait.

We got into our room just as the first round of drinks was being prepared, and ten minutes after settling into our seats and warming up the terminals Alun came in. He looked grubby, and I wondered if he had spent the night on the camping mat in his trysting room. He was smiling, though, and went straight over to the boss.

“Ma’am?”

She looked up, and he handed her a little piece of card

“I couldn’t sort out the LIO’s filing system, in the end. So I just asked him straight, innit?”

“Give his keys back?”

“Er, no comment on that one, ma’am. Look. This is a copy of one of his little drawings. He’s got photos somewhere, looking for this one now”

She looked confused. “He not file them together?”

Alun gave a strangled laugh. “Data Protection Act, aye? He thinks if it’s hand-written it doesn’t come under the Act, so he files the photos, which come from a machine, in the most awkward way possible so he can claim to have forgotten them. On bloody Planet Intel, innit? Anyway, he’s chaining up his dragon or whatever looks after the photos, and he’ll have it for us in a bit. Now, look at this one. By the way, he files them alphabetically under body part types”

“What, ‘A for Arm, B for Buttock’?”

“Just about, ma’am, but each---member has the names in alpha order of those who’ve got some work there”

Bloody hell! Would it be w, c, d or p? I had to ask.

“Does he…?”

Alun grinned. “Aye. Under ‘P’ for, well, just under ‘P’. Anyway, look at this drawing”

We gathered round the desk with the Inspector to see what he had. I wouldn’t have called it realistic, just four simple hand shapes marked ‘palm’ and ‘back’ with simple drawings of any tattoos known to be present, each tat with a descriptive text linked to it by a ruled line. The card he held showed four tattoos on the back of a right hand, and they were marked ‘Bluebird, dragon, ostrich feathers, dragon’.

I shot over to the photo files, and scrabbled for the print-outs from the Smuggler’s camera. Shit.

“Yes, ma’am. See the feathers? I lay odds on that when the photo’s found we’ve got the watcher. Got a name on that card?”

Alun nodded. “Just a sec… Yeah, I do believe that is a match. Let’s see who we have”

Elaine reached straight past him and flipped the card, and every muscle in her face set tight. My own heart gave a lurch, and I had to look twice, but that name was still there, still shouting at me.

It’s a common surname, girl. It’s a Welsh surname, DC Owens. We are in bloody Wales. Nothing changed, and the name sat in my eyes.

Jamie Richard Evans.