Anni’s first thought about the building was: it’s so different from the one I’m used to.
Southway station in Colchester looked like an eighties prison. Or a hospital designed by someone who didn’t want the patients to get well. This one, she thought, looked like a Gothic castle.
Nice. Wish I worked here.
She walked through the main doors, straight up to the desk. The sergeant looked up from the notes he was writing. She held her warrant card up to the glass.
‘Detective Constable Hepburn,’ she said. ‘Anni Hepburn.’
He was young and anonymously blond, she thought. Good-looking in a bland way. She saw a squash ball on the counter before him. Must practise his wrist-strengthening exercises during his shift, she thought, and didn’t know if that was a good thing, keeping healthy, or just too narcissistic.
He smiled at her, looked at the card, then back to her. ‘Bit far off your patch, aren’t you?’
‘I’ve been visiting an old friend,’ she said. ‘Something came up while I was doing it.’
She looked at the figure standing next to her. So did the desk sergeant. Hugo Gwilym stood there looking dishevelled in his old clothes and beanie hat.
The desk sergeant frowned, leaned in towards Anni. ‘He looks like that bloke off the telly,’ he said, out of earshot of Gwilym.
‘You mean,’ she said, ‘he looks like that bloke who used to be on the telly.’
‘Eh?’
Instead of elaborating, she turned to Gwilym. ‘Come on, over here.’
He moved forward obediently. He looked broken, like he no longer had the strength to argue any more. Like the fight had left him. He stood next to her at the desk. She looked at him. He stared back at her, eyes red-rimmed.
‘Well?’ she said.
He didn’t move, didn’t speak.
‘Haven’t you got something to say?’ she prompted.
Still he didn’t speak.
She leaned in to him. ‘It’s over, Gwilym,’ she said. ‘Finished. You’re finished. If you don’t do this now, you’re only putting off the inevitable. You know that.’
He sighed. Opened his mouth. ‘My name’s Hugo Gwilym,’ he said.
Anni saw the light of recognition in the desk sergeant’s eyes.
‘And why are you here, Hugo?’ said Anni, as if she was leading a recalcitrant small child.
‘I’m… here to… to turn myself in.’
The desk sergeant waited, looking perplexed. Anni leaned in once more, prompted again. ‘And why are you here to turn yourself in, Hugo?’
He looked at her. One last, long, despairing, pathetic look. She stared back at him. As empathic as a rock. Realising that this really was the end, knowing he had no choice, he turned back to the sergeant.
‘I’m here to… turn myself in because…’ he sighed, ‘I’m a rapist…’
The desk sergeant’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.
Anni smiled. ‘And get him a doctor for his head. Wouldn’t want the bastard suing us.’