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There’s this saying that keeps coming back to me. I don’t remember where I heard it first or who said it, but it goes something like this.
What is a good man but a bad man’s teacher? What is a bad man but a good man’s job?
Nice and simple. So long as you know which side you fall on, that is. Over here, sat quietly in the corner, you have the good guys. And over there in that other corner, smoking spliffs and getting angry, are the bad guys. Do the right thing and you’re a good guy. Do the wrong thing and you’re... etcetera, etcetera.
In practice, what that means is, we have law-abiding citizens over here, lawbreakers over there. Givers here, takers there. Police officers here, fuckwits there.
But what about the ones caught up in the middle? Is there even a middle?
‘Careful you don’t blow out the windows with that sigh.’
Ange’s heels clack over the bathroom tiles. She lays a cool hand on my right shoulder and props her chin on my left. I pause with the razor mid air. Tepid soapy water slides down my forearm to my elbow, then drips to the floor.
‘You love it really,’ she says. She means the job. This is Ange’s answer to everything job-related. A catch-all phrase to shut the conversation down, this time before I’ve even said anything.
I get tired of waiting for her to move, and go back to the shaving, twisting my mouth to say, ‘Just thinking about that kid from the other night.’
‘The one you had to put in the cooler?’ Her chin digs into my shoulder bone with every word.
‘Twelve though. Mouth like a sewer.’ The murky water in the sink shudders as I flick the razor in to rinse it. ‘Christ, at that age I was afraid to speak to my old man and his workmates, let alone mouth off in front of them.’
‘Not much changed there then.’ Her fingers squeeze my shoulder, and when I catch her eye in the mirror her smile is tight-lipped and teasing.
‘You’re in a good mood,’ I say.
She drops her hand to my waist where she gives it a light tap before going out to the bedroom without closing the door. There’s a window open somewhere. Its draught cools my back and sends goosebumps up my spine. I lean closer to the mirror to snag the bits I’ve missed.
‘Twelve though,’ I mutter at myself, remembering the look on the lad’s face when I showed him his B&B accommodation for the night. The prospect should have scared him shitless. A glare that could cut steel and a gap-toothed grin suggested otherwise. All balls, but doubtless a curl on them yet. Bet he couldn’t wait to Snapchat his mates with the news.
What are you supposed to do with a kid like that? Educate or punish? Both easier said than done when he has no regard for either. It wouldn’t be a wild guess to say criminality and possibly incarceration ran in his family. In which case I should feel sorry for him, it’ll take some doing to break that particular mould, few do. But a screwed-up face and four-letter-word tirade don’t make sympathy all that easy.
I yank out the plug. It drains quick, leaving a scum I attempt to rinse with handfuls of cold water. In the bedroom, Ange is whistling Viva España, the novelty of which wore off about six months ago, right after the first time she did it. The towel from the radiator is warm and I dry my face, holding it over my eyes for a second. Just a second.
‘It’s still there,’ she announces, as I come out of the bathroom. She’s sat in the rattan chair by the dressing table with her laptop on her thighs and her ankles propped up and crossed on the bed. Nylon tights crackle where she rubs her toes against each other while I wait patiently for her to move so I can pass. Her feet land on the carpet with a soft thud, her eyes still hooked by the screen.
I pick up the fresh polo shirt I’ve laid out on the duvet and pull it over my head. At the mirror, I undo the top button on the cargo trousers to tuck the shirt in, and when it’s tidy enough, I redo the button and brush off the towel lint clinging to the polyester. Taking my boots from the floor by the wardrobe where I left them after polishing them earlier, I sit on the bed to put them on. All this is done with a concentrated effort. And with good reason. It keeps my mind from wandering ahead to what’s waiting for me.
This is everyone’s favourite game at the station except mine. They make a meal out of speculating what’s to come, as if by voicing the worst possible outcome they can have some influence over it; tell themselves enough times that tonight will be shit, and perhaps it’ll be a breeze instead. I tug at the laces on my boot, starting from the bottom and working my way up.
Superstitions and obsessions. There’s a surprising amount of them around these days. The old man would spin in his grave. Though maybe with twelve-year-old’s gobbing at your feet and calling you a fuck-faced twat, you need all the help you can get. And if that comes in the form of some hippy woo woo nonsense, then so be it.
‘Still there,’ Ange sings, before resuming the whistling.
I yank on the laces of the other boot, tutting when I notice a spot of polish I’ve failed to wipe off. I rub my thumb over it, but it smudges.
‘It’s a sign, Steve. It must be.’
Christ, not her as well.
‘I’m telling you, that finca is ours. Told you, didn’t I? Every time we passed it, it just caught my eye.’
Plenty of things catch my eye. Doesn’t mean I can have them.
I don’t bother saying this. Never start a shift on an argument. The job’s hard enough as it is.
‘Thought any more about The Lobster Pot?’ she asks, fingernails tapping lightly on the laptop’s keys, a sound that goes through me.
‘Not really had a chance.’
I get up from the bed and pull open the drawer, shove aside socks and pants, finding an unopened packet of new black socks at the back I’d forgotten about and moving them to the front to remind me. Ange is still talking, but I’m not sure what she’s saying because I can’t find my bloody—
‘Thing is, Steve, leave it too long and I guarantee this finca will be gone. I really think we should jump in now.’
‘Have you seen my belt?’
‘Behind you on the bed.’
I turn and tut. Right where I left it.
‘The Lobster would be a lovely holiday home for someone,’ she goes on. ‘An old couple or a young family.’
‘It’s lovely for us,’ I say, looking in the mirror as I thread the belt through the trouser loops, trying to remember when we last spent more than a few days at the cottage. Who needs Spain when you’ve got the south-west coast of Wales and a view across the English Channel to Devon on a sunny day?
‘Of course it’s been lovely,’ Ange says, enunciating her words in that way I imagine she does for customers at the building society when she’s upselling to them. ‘And we’ve had a lot of use out of it over the years. But we’ve outgrown it now.’
‘Have we?’
‘I mean it’s not like when Dan was small and a couple of seagulls and some rocks would entertain him for days.’
‘Before long, Dan won’t want to come with us anywhere.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Exactly,’ I repeat, taking my warrant card and keys from the bedside drawer. ‘We’ll have the cottage to ourselves.’
The chair she’s sat on is next to the door, which means I can’t avoid her on the way out. Ange is older than me by seven years, though has kept her smouldering looks remarkably well for the latter end of forties. She’s also kept her habit of pulling faces like a child. Like now. Her top lip curls up enough to skew up her nose and render one eye half closed. This is how she feels about Mum and Dad’s coastal bolthole, the one I inherited after they passed.
‘It’s peaceful,’ I say. ‘It’s a beautiful spot. No one knows us there. No one bothers us there.’
She points a neatly French-manicured fingernail at the laptop, then taps at the screen until I’m forced to relent and look at it.
‘Peaceful,’ she says, as for the hundredth time I gaze upon the image of the red-bricked Spanish finca with a perfect artificial front lawn and a painted sky. ‘Beautiful spot. No one knows us. No one bothers us.’ Her fingernail moves to the digitally enhanced blue. ‘Guaranteed good weather. A better return on investment. A desired spot, and a lucrative extra income during high season. A nest egg until you retire.’
‘And then?’
Reaching up to entwine her arm around mine, she gently clutches my bicep beneath the sleeve of the polo. Emerald eyes underscored with green eyeliner widen as they look up at me.
‘Then, Officer Fuller, you get your reward for all these years of hard work.’
‘A Ferrari 812?’
Tutting, she drops her hand, nails catching my skin. She points again at the screen. ‘You get to live in a beautiful country, carefree.’
I can do that here.
I don’t say this either, but I do let her have the last word for now, slipping past her and heading downstairs to the kitchen. I hit the switch on the kettle on my way through, check the clock. Just gone seven. Night shift starts at eight. It’s only a twenty-minute drive to the station, but lateness is one of those things that gets under my skin. I like to have time to brace myself. Get my head in the game before the game can get in my head.
‘What time will you be home in the morning?’ Ange calls, passing through the hallway to the sitting room as I’m shrugging on my jacket.
‘Same time as always, with any luck.’
‘Only I might have to leave early,’ she adds, voice muffled as she moves about the room. ‘Whitchurch are short-staffed and I’ll probably need to fill in. Waiting for Claire to let me know.’
I zip up the jacket over the emblem on my shirt. Not that everyone round here doesn’t know what I do for a living by now, but caution pays in this job. The rest of my gear is in the locker at the station and only ever comes home if it needs washing. A little something I learned from the old man. Maintain the divide, keep things separate, home and work shouldn’t cross. Some of the others struggle with this, but it’s easy – you draw a line down the middle of the two and everything falls either on one side or the other. My father brought nothing home he didn’t need to. It was only when I joined up myself that I understood the full extent of what his job actually involved. From foot patrol right through the ranks to Chief Inspector, forty-plus years, Dad was a soldier – not once did he bring any of it to the dinner table.
The kettle clicks off and I pour hot water into the flask I’ve already prepped with Nescafé. There’s a machine at the station, supposedly coffee, but there’s some debate over that. We used to have a kitchen once upon a time, until some jobsworth decided appliances were health and safety hazards and took everything electrical away, as if we couldn’t be trusted with anything over a couple of volts; same reason we’re still waiting on Tasers. Now if you burn yourself at the drinks machine, that’s your own fault, nothing to do with South East Wales Police so don’t even think about suing.
‘So you’ll take Dan?’ She comes into the kitchen as I’m screwing on the lid of the flask.
‘Can’t he catch the bus?’
I reach into the fridge for my sandwich box. Tuna and mayo this week while I partner with Sacha – she doesn’t mind fish. Clayton’s the awkward one. Claims he’s got a fish allergy and can’t have the stuff anywhere near him. Clayton claims he’s got an allergy to just about everything, though the only one I’ve ever seen evidence of is his allergy to work. He’s the kind that likes to tick the least amount of boxes and that’s his day done. He’d be killing it on the production line, but makes me wonder why he signed up for the Force. It’s not for the hours, the remuneration or the holidays, that’s for sure.
‘Steve.’
‘What?’ I say, as I close the fridge door and pull my kit bag over the counter.
‘Are you even listening? You know I don’t want him catching the school bus.’
‘He’s fifteen, Ange.’ I load the bag with the flask and sandwiches.
‘And he was fourteen when they beat the living shit out of him.’
For having a copper for a dad, she doesn’t add. Not this time, anyway.
‘I’m only asking if you’ll take him to school. But if it’s too much bother...’
‘It’s not too much bother. I’ll take him.’
Ten past seven. I close the door on the toilet just off the kitchen and manoeuvre around the clothes horse to get to the john. Dalston’s the sergeant on shift tonight, so the preliminaries shouldn’t go on too long. It was Roberts last night. Roberts is thorough, but with a tendency to ramble. It was almost nine by the time me and Sacha rolled out onto the street. By then, town’s already warming up and it was straight into the first bare-knuckled brawl of the evening.
I hit the flush, grab my bag from the kitchen counter, double check my pocket for my keys and card, and pop my head round the sitting room door on the way down the hall. ‘See you later then.’
Ange has curled her legs up on the sofa as she scrolls through something on her phone, the laptop half-open on the coffee table, finca still glaring at me. She tucks a strand of chestnut hair behind her ear. The room is already growing dark as the evening light fades, and in its shadow I notice she looks tired.
‘You’ll think about it though, Steve?’
‘Think about what?’
‘Getting the cottage valued.’
‘I don’t need to. I know how much it’s worth.’
‘You know what I mean. Properly valued. By an estate agent.’
I stifle a sigh. I don’t want to say yes to this just to keep the peace, but I don’t want to leave for night shift under a cloud either.
‘There’s work I need to do on it first,’ I say, aware that I’ve used these same words before. And immediately it’s clear they’re not enough. Something to do with the way her chin dips and eyes are lightly scolding.
‘Realistically though, Steve, are you going to get the time?’ She says it like I’m the one who’s disillusioned. ‘Especially once you’ve made sergeant.’
‘If I do.’
‘You will. You aced the exam. Job would’ve been yours years ago if you’d gone for it.’
I scratch at an itch that isn’t there on my jaw. We need the extra money the sergeant’s grade would give us, but desk work and staff assessments was never what I wanted. I like the street. I like being responsible only for myself and my partner. And progress comes at a price. It did for Dad. Face down on his blotter, only sixty years old, not even time to enjoy his forthcoming retirement.
‘I’m not heartless, Steve, I know there’s an emotional attachment to consider.’ The tilt of her head makes the shadows under her eyes even darker, and for a second I think we’re still talking about the job, until she adds, ‘The Lobster meant a lot to your parents. There are memories there, an attachment. I understand that.’
‘Haven’t really thought about it,’ I say. Because I haven’t; when would I get the time? ‘I’ve got to go.’
I hope she won’t get up from the sofa, but she does. I back up to indicate time’s getting on, but she comes with me, so I have to stop and peck her on the cheek. She taps her hand at my chest, looks up at me with a gentle smile.
‘Leave it to me, love. I’ll get us a figure and then we can go from there. And who knows, perhaps after sergeant you’ll go for inspector and maybe retire earlier than you thought. It would be nice if you could leave the Force before your dad meant to.’
‘Before my heart gives out on the job, you mean?’
Ange frowns at my reference. She’s not very good with the old gallows humour – she’d make a terrible copper. I give her another kiss, and head down the hall, glad to be finally on my way.
With my kit bag on the passenger seat, I’m pulling the Focus away from the pavement, when I glance up to Dan’s room on the first floor. Instinct makes me do it, a long-ingrained habit. When he was little, he’d watch me go off to work from there every day, wearing his policeman’s costume tabard and waving a plastic revolver, in much the same way I used to do with my own dad.
Course, it’s been a while since he’s watched me leave for work. So I’m surprised to see him standing at the window now. Not waving of course, nor even smiling, but I can just make out the grey of his t-shirt, the dyed black mop of his hair. I tap on the brakes, lean forward and raise a thumbs-up close to the windscreen where he’ll be able to see it even in the fading light. I flick on the interior bulb as well and give him a big smile.
Before he pulls the curtains, I think I see a slight puff of his chest and jerk of the head, as if he’s snorting out a sarcastic laugh. But the light’s too poor to be sure. Maybe I got that wrong.
That’s the thing about being a copper, it makes you cynical. While the thing about teenagers is, they make you paranoid.
