CHAPTER 28
Ten days of an odd alphabet, odder plumbing, strange food and a sea that was visibly (and bloody tangibly) very different to that off Barry. I loved it, and of course it left me with a real dilemma.

The ‘Dom Rep’ would always be there in my heart, for we had married there. Cavallino had seen a sweet man ask me if he could make such a thing possible. Kos… Kos was our family doing a new thing as a family, setting precedents. I have read so many times in so many places that ‘you can never go back’, but that wasn’t my, our, problem. The number of places I wanted and needed to go back to was growing quickly.

It was a revelation in other ways, too. Seeing Elaine actually relax was a first. She was, is, a lovely woman, but there was always something of the coiled spring to her, the loaded crossbow, bolt in place. Seeing her reclined by the pool, Siân delegated to sunblock duties that stopped just short of fondling, warmed my heart. I had seen Elaine drunk, I had seen her almost broken, I had followed her baton into a van full of utter bastards, and I knew she never, ever held back from what she thought was right.

Kevin caught my mood towards the end of the holiday, as I watched Siân hand her a cold drink, kiss her so very gently, and settle down beside her in several layers of gauzy cloth.

“She looks almost harmless like that, Di”

I reached out to squeeze his hand, and as I did so I understood how close he was to her, how close we all were.

“Lainey? Harmless? I take your point, mate. I was just thinking about how it’s so rare to see her relaxed. Please take this the right way, yeah? Thanks. This is the sort of thing she really, really needs. I don’t think she lets go easily, does she?”

His gaze went to a different place for a while, then he looked back at me with a twisted grin.

“Fair point. You should have seen her when, well, when her sis had her problems”

I went cold at that.

“Fucking Evans and Pritchard, yeah?”

He nodded. “Fucking Evans and Pritchard indeed. Have you met Sarah? Her sister?”

“No”

I thought for less than a second before adding “Not yet”

He nodded.

“You know her history?”

“Oh yes. Especially with Fucking Evans, Evans and Pritchard”

“Indeed. Thing is, with Sar, Sarah, she’s found just the right man, aye? Tony is an absolute diamond, loves Sarah to distraction, and that, well, odd as it seems, it gives Lainey a problem. She’s that woman pushing at the locked door, and then it opens, and she goes flat on her face”

I looked at him, at the way his face worked, the tells in his eyes, and I knew. Shit. I had watched him with his children, with his wife, and there was no way he was not in love with all of them, but there it was in front of me and I understood his need to talk, to protect.

It would have been so easy just then to ask, to confirm his feelings for our friend, but I knew without prompting that this needed to remain unacknowledged. I thought ‘poor sod’, just for an instant, before catching where his gaze followed Vicky and their children.

Sublimation. I knew, as that word came to me, that it was the wrong one, but in this case it worked, up to a point. He clearly loved his family at least as much as he did Elaine, and that isn’t a gift many people receive in life. Let it lie, girl.

“So, what’s the plan when we get back?”

“Eh?”

“Straight back to work, or taking a bit more time for the kids?”

“Oh, I see. Me, I’ll just be back at work. Vicky went part-time ages ago, what with those two, so she’ll be available for domestic drudgery and that while I bring home the bison steaks”

I looked across at him, and that teasing glint was there, as it would have been in the eyes of so many people I knew, so I just laughed.

“Kev, is it a natural reaction sort of thing, or do we get taught it? Silly humour, bad jokes, all that shit?”

He took some time to think, which showed me clearly how right I was in my estimation of his depths.

“Not sure, Di. I think a lot of us pick it up from colleagues, or rather we pick up style, detail, what do you call it? Tropes? Yeah, tropes, themes. But the reaction, it’s a natural thing. Laughing in the face of the nasties. When Vicky and me first met, it was a bit like that”

“Oh?”

He shook his head. “She’ll kill me, aye? Sod it. It was a blind date thing. Newspaper ads stuff, so I needed to take a mate along for safety stuff, and she brought one as well”

“You took Lainey?”

He snorted. “Yup! And Vicky only brings that one over there along! We should have got bulk discount, BOGOF, whatever. Rest is obviously history, but after the ice was broken, I think it was Lainey says ‘Right, free pint for who can tell the best stupid driver story’ or something like that. Those two, they’re not in the Job, but with Highways Agency they get to see a lot of the same shit that broke Annie. Same reaction, same sense of humour. Make sense?”

I nodded, and resolved to keep the blind date revelation in reserve.

“Makes sense indeed. Strange how it doesn’t extend further”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we’ve been working on a long string of very nasty abuse cases, and the victims, well, none of them seem to have that reaction”

He was nodding. “Yeah. I think it must be having people around you that does it”

“I think you’ve hit the target there. We had help on one case, bait for a trap, yeah? Same stupid jokes from him, and in the end he was really part of the team. Civil servant, not a copper”

“You included him, though? Made him feel part of your own group?”

“Bloody hell aye!”

Another nod.

“There you have it, then. Can’t imagine working without a team, me”

“Yeah… Absolutely. We’d be lost. Anyway, after we’re back I know one of us will probably end up spending her time looking at sodding videos from CCTV”

He patted my hand.

“Indoors, out of the rain, then?”

I waved a hand at the blue sky, and he laughed out loud.

“Aye, and which bloody country do we live in?”

“Point taken!”

“Oh, and don’t forget, those two have a wedding to go to. You invited?”

“Ah. No. Not kept in contact, have I?”

He stared at me intently, then started to laugh again, but it was with real warmth.

“Oh dear! Don’t we make a right lot of idiots!”

I offered back my warmest smile.

“Yup, but happy ones!”

“Oh indeed! Want some juice? Just going to get the kids out of the sun for a bit”

“Please!”

Annie’s wedding… No. Let her live her life, keep those earlier thoughts. Kev was back in a couple of minutes with some cold drinks, and I settled down to think of nicer things, or at least less complicated ones.

All too soon, which is the mark of a good holiday, we were done, packed and sat on the plane home, two out of three of our little jewels fortunately asleep for the whole journey while little Taz rhapsodised about the view from her boosted window seat. We landed, we queued, we found our luggage and said our goodbyes. I felt almost lost, just three of us to open our front door, put the kettle on and leave the luggage for later.

Worry about return to work was eased by the message on our answering machine.

“Hiya, it’s Deb. Hope the holiday was good. Just to let you know I have a queue of girls here wanting to offer childminding duties. Let me know”

I thought back to the poolside, as Blake wiped what looked like an entire pot of fruit yoghurt off Rhod’s face: happy idiots indeed.

Work was what it was, and Sammy had been busy. We now had a league table on the wall as we were now so much in demand that we were really having to prioritise. Jobs moved up or down the list depending on a combination of available resources, seriousness of the matter and necessary delay due to things like prior trials or forensics. There were three boards, labelled ‘HT’, ‘FP’ and ‘EMFP’, which puzzled me.

“Candice?”

“Yup, brown girl with the ring?”

“Oh, shut up, Blondie. So I tan easily. What’s with the initials?”

“Ah, that was Chris. Popped by to let us have---oh! You won’t have heard?”

“Heard what? Never mind, first things, yeah? HT?”

“Yeah. Chris came up with that. He said we needed some sort of area code, so they stand for Wales, England and anywhere else, like Scotland or Norn Arn. I mean ‘Northern Ireland’, sorry. He’s got me doing it now”

I puzzled at it, but there was still no logical link jumping out at me. My thought processes weren’t helped by her stupid grin, so I just grunted “And?”

She adopted the most over-the-top imitation of a camp gay man I could ever remember seeing, which was clearly meant to be Chris.

“Home Turf, Forn Parts, Even More Forn Parts. He actually suggested ‘FFP’ for the last, but the boss vetoed it”

“I see. That man gets worse. And what won’t I have heard?”

Her grin morphed into a softer smile.

“Actually, it’s Chris himself, Di. He’s been bitten bad, and I blame you two, you and your Fresh meat Jonny Boy. Chris is engaged”

“No!”

“Yup. One of the doctors that treated Omar when, you know. He’s keeping it reasonably quiet just now, so Mum is your lexicon stuff. Apparently Beloved Quack’s parents might not be entirely on board with the idea, so Chris has asked if we can keep it low-key for a while. See if they come round. You are bloody infectious, DC Sutton”

Happy idiots. Candice had a tissue for me, and I blamed maternal hormones while she rustled up some cups and a couple of biscuits.

“What brought that on, love?”

I found my head shaking automatically.

“Don’t really know, girl. Just been so many things, one after the other. Hard to put into words, isn’t it, but it’s been a bit like a door shutting on things. I spent so many years waiting to hit back…”

She shuffled her chair over by my own, so she could take my hand.

“Yeah, I know. You came in as a right hard case, nemo me tango sort of thing, and that’s all gone. We can all see you now… Take a compliment, yeah, without arguing? We like what we see. You just need a breather, time to catch your balance again. Good holiday?”

“Yes, it was. Plenty of time for thinking, even with the kiddy along. Good company. The Powells, and Siân’s cousin and her family. Two children, they have. Rhod enjoyed the company”

“Well, settle down here for a bit. Get that new balance sorted, get your feet back under the desk, and I will catch you in a few. Got to do a statement run”
“Thanks, Candice”
“Any time, girl. You know that, or you should. Later!”
Breathe. Find that balance, and it was exactly that. So many years of looking back over my shoulder, and now I had my eyes forward. I settled down to the next bunch of annotated discs with a smile far freer than it had been.
Just over a month later, we had a message from Lainey.
You free next week at all?
I texted back with the necessaries, and three evenings later she was knocking at our door, wife in tow. I had just started tea for my boy, a pasta in tomato sauce thing, and I sat him at the little chair and table arrangement we had found for him. Siân brewed up in the kitchen as I helped Rhod with the messiness, and Elaine waved a CD box at me.

“Put the telly on for this, girl?”

“What you got?”

“Annie’s wedding. You don’t have to if you’d rather not, aye?”

I looked down at my little man, his face red with sauce, and called out for Siân to bring a cloth from the kitchen. The Annie boat had sailed ages ago; eyes forward, woman.

“Yeah, go on”

She slipped in the disc, and I clicked the telly over to the right channel before passing her the god box.

“Right… OK. This is St Nick’s, where Steph Woodruff got married. That’s the vicar, Simon… Oh yeah, that’s bit on the side”

“That’s the cousin, from the tea shop that day!”

Elaine grinned. “Yup. Bit of matchmaking by Annie, I would guess. Hang on… bit of video here, turn the sound up?”

Singing, in Welsh, and it was bloody glorious. That was another thing from that day in the tea rooms, and as more still pictures followed I saw Elaine’s father and uncle again, the latter with a smiling grey-haired woman that was obviously his wife.

“That’s Alice, my uncle’s wife, and that… That one’s Steph and Geoff, you’ve seen them… And our sister Sarah and her boys”

I hadn’t known what to expect, but what I saw was a good-looking woman in her late thirties or early forties, clearly related to Elaine, but far slimmer, longer in leg, with a man who looked as big as Blake but far more solid.

“These are all out of order, Di. The service went a bit sideways, wedding car broke down and stuff. I’ve put as many guest pics as I could at the start, because I wasn’t supposed to be taking pictures in the church”

I took the cloth from Siân and wiped a sizeable smear of sauce from my boy’s chin.

“You did take some, though, or you wouldn’t say that”

“Bloody coppers. Too quick on the uptake. Yes, I did. I just wanted to save one for the end, but these ones…”

She had been quick with her camera, and it was obvious when the shots had been taken. The groom waits at the altar, the bride arrives, and the music is played. I was guessing, having heard the singing from her family, and no doubt that music included Elaine’s as well, that the music she had entered the church too had been live and choral rather than from the church organ. Two photos.

Eric looked back over his shoulder, to see the bride arriving, his bride, his intended, and the smile I had seen while blonde was there in full.

Annie, in white, a simple Regency-style gown, a veil held by a circlet of flowers, and her face, her smile, her joy and delight, still clear through the netting. More than that, she looked absolutely happy in her skin, in her life, in her love for the man awaiting her.

Once more, my tears were there.

“Lainey? This isn’t such a shitty world after all, is it?”