It was fourteen days since Adrian had been attacked – fifteen since he had been at work. Driving to the station took a new kind of courage. He knew he would be inside, safe, but he didn’t want to see his colleagues. What if they knew? What if someone figured it out just by looking at him? At least on the outside he looked the same as he usually did. His face was no longer bruised and his lip had completely healed.
When he arrived, Imogen walked across the car park towards his car, a genuine look of happiness to see him on her face. Did he even deserve her anymore? Did she deserve him? Didn’t she deserve better?
He got out of the car and closed the door. His pain was manageable now; he just had to remember to move slowly so as not to set himself back again. Appearing to be normal was his goal for now.
‘I missed you so much!’ She beamed.
‘I saw you this morning,’ Adrian said, walking slowly towards the station.
He had drifted in and out of sleep on the sofa while she slept upstairs in the bed, alone. They had breakfast together, but things were difficult right now. Maybe Imogen thought working together again could fix the rift that was forming between them.
‘I mean here – this place is shit without you.’
He smiled. ‘Thank you.’
‘I’ve been forced to eat proper lunches with Gary in the canteen every day.’
‘I’ll be deskbound for a while, so no drive-thrus just yet.’
‘Killjoy.’ Imogen looped her arm through his and whispered to him, ‘I really wish I could kiss you.’
She opened the station door and Adrian sucked in a breath before stepping inside. Here, now, there was no escaping it. Life had to go on – it was going to go on whether he was ready or not. Time to get back on the wheel and try to get back to before the attack. Back through that railway arch.
They walked through the security door and into the main room. DCI Kapoor stuck her head out of her office.
‘DS Miles, DS Grey. My office, please.’
He walked straight to the DCI’s office without looking around at the faces to see if they were watching him or not.
‘Hello, Ma’am.’
‘Good to see you, Adrian. How are you feeling?’
‘My rib still hurts a little, but I’m OK.’
‘Imogen tells me you’ve been horribly ill. Are you sure you’re ready to come back?’
‘Absolutely. I’ve been going crazy at home.’
‘Gary will do a run-through of what we know so far. He’ll recap and you can see where we are. Maybe your fresh eyes on this will help us get this bastard. It’s good to have you back.’
‘Good to be back, Ma’am.’
‘Did Imogen speak to you about the conversation we had the other day? About maybe having you working on different teams. Just to shake things up.’
‘She did,’ he said. ‘But Imogen and I work well together. The incident the other day was completely my fault and had nothing to do with anyone else. I acted inappropriately; the nature of the crime is personal to me, Ma’am, and I lost my head a bit. DS Grey was attempting to defuse the situation.’
The truth was, Adrian didn’t want to be partnered with anyone else, because he didn’t trust anyone else. He knew where he was with Imogen, at least, and they did work well together. He didn’t know Matt Walsh enough to want to spend time alone with him in a car. In fact, it made him angry even thinking about it. Angry because being alone in a car with another man wasn’t something he would even have thought about a few weeks ago. Was this it, then? Was everything tainted by this one thing?
‘And you agree, Imogen?’
‘Absolutely. I trust DS Miles completely and I believe it was a minor blip,’ Imogen said.
‘Regardless,’ DCI Kapoor started, turning to Adrian, ‘until you pass your physical, DS Grey will be working with DI Walsh.’
‘I don’t need a babysitter,’ Imogen said.
DCI Kapoor ignored her.
‘Adrian, I don’t know the exact circumstances that led to your injuries, but it’s important to remember that you are always a police officer. It doesn’t matter where you are, you represent all of us, whatever you are doing, whoever you are doing it with. My trust is not unconditional.
‘When I was posted here it was with the primary objective of restoring this department’s reputation. No one is above the law. I have had some discretion to deal with matters as I saw fit in order to minimise public distrust, but now the dust has well and truly settled we need to be above reproach. All of us.’
‘It won’t happen again, Ma’am,’ Adrian said.
He had no desire to put himself in any more unnecessarily dangerous situations.
‘Great. I’ll be through to the briefing room in a moment.’
Imogen and Adrian both stood and walked back out into the bullpen. Adrian had to ignore his beating heart, desperate to focus on something else. This was his life now. He had to come here every day and so he needed to get used to it. He needed to calm the hell down and get on with it.
‘OK?’ Imogen said.
‘I need the bathroom. I’ll be through in a moment.’
Adrian rushed through the corridor as fast as he could. His rib ached but he didn’t care. Inside the bathroom he quickly entered the cubicle and locked the door, pressing the weight of his body against it. Keep it together. He hadn’t eaten breakfast and so there was nothing to come out of him, but the nausea passed.
It was a trade-off, being around other people and feeling sick and afraid, versus being alone and feeling sick and afraid. Both had their pros and cons. He felt safer with other people around, safer from physical harm, at least. What he didn’t like about being around other people was the feeling that maybe they would be able to see past the thin veneer he had put in place, as though maybe somehow he couldn’t act normal enough. It was impossible to decide which of these was worse.
His mind drifted back to suicide, just like that. If you can’t exist in one place or another, then where do you go? Remembering what the priest had said to him about how his death would impact those who care about him, he composed himself. He stepped out of the cubicle and splashed water on his face. He left the men’s room and walked to the briefing room.
Let’s do this.