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When I’m on my way out of the door, Ange reminds me for the umpteenth time about Dan’s parents’ evening tonight. She always insists I be there, even though we know what they’ll say. We’ve never had a bad report for him, and I don’t expect it to be any different now. More like, we’ll sit across the table while the teachers praise what a good kid he is, we’ll say yes we’re very proud of him but you’d never guess what he’s like at home, everyone will laugh politely, Dan will resemble a beetroot, and when we leave, he’ll walk six feet ahead like he has nothing to do with us. But none of this will go down well if I mention it to Ange. If nothing else, I know when to toe the line. I tell her I’ll get there as soon as I can.
‘Right then, Smithy, you up for this or what?’ I say to my partner, tugging the seatbelt across the front of my vest and clicking it in place.
PC Neil Smith adjusts the crotch of his trousers in the driver’s seat and looks at me like I’ve just spoken in Mandarin.
‘Nice to see at least one of us managed to fit in a stress reliever this morning,’ he grumbles, and starts the car.
‘Not my fault you can’t organise your time, mate. You might want to rein it in now you’re getting on a bit. Leave the candle burning to the youth.’
‘Oy, you cheeky fuck, I am the youth. Compared to you anyway. What was it again, the big five-oh?’
I let him have that one, seeing as it’s early and, candle burning or not, he can be a temperamental sod first thing.
‘Anyway, you wouldn’t have said no either, Fuller, if you’d seen her.’ Smithy cracks a smile as he pulls away from the station and out into the traffic queuing at the lights.
‘Well, Ange might say otherwise.’
‘Mate.’ Smithy’s dark and faintly bloodshot eyes look at me like I haven’t lived. ‘What a handful. I mean, both of them.’ He flips his hands over on the steering wheel, imagining something there that I don’t see.
‘Much as I envy your youth and single status, Smithy, you can’t expect me to believe that two hands were required. For a start, you’d need one to operate the mouse, right? Then to hold your credit card while you read out the number.’
My partner for the day slaps his palms back on the steering wheel and shakes his head as he drives us through the traffic lights and bears left. ‘Jealousy, my friend. It’s an ugly trait.’
‘Like deceit. Big-headedness.’
‘Hey mate, I can show you the pictures. Want to see?’ He takes one hand from the wheel to undo a pocket on his utility vest, but I hold up my palm to stop him.
‘Christ, no, you’re alright. I’d like to keep my breakfast where it is.’
Smithy manages a sly chuckle as he manoeuvres the car to the bottom end of town, pulling in to the side of the road close to the boarded-up Indian takeaway, a notorious drug peddling spot. It might be only just after nine in the morning, but sometimes business picks up around this time, once the kids have been dropped off at school.
‘Look out,’ Smithy says, lowering the electric window and sticking his head out. ‘Hey, Right Guard. How’s it going, man?’
There’s a mumbled something of a reply, then a cough, before I see the man himself scrambling to his feet, tugging his sleeping bag with him. He beams a gap-toothed grin through his ragged, furry beard.
‘No sweat, fellas, no sweat.’
‘Getting everything you need?’ Smithy rests his elbow on the door, fingers propping the frame.
Right Guard gives a thumbs up. ‘Yep, yep. All good. No sweat, man.’
He thrusts the sleeping bag into his ancient, battered army kit bag like he was only this minute setting off when we pulled up. Right Guard’s old school; he’s been on the streets longer than I’ve been a serving officer. As such, he can’t ever seem to get over the fact that these days we won’t arrest him just for being there.
‘Hey, where’s Piper?’ Smithy asks, looking up and down the pavement and whistling for the white and brown Jack Russell that’s never too far from its owner. Except the old man shakes his head, pulls the drawstring on his kit bag to close it, and steps out from the doorway of the abandoned DVD rental shop.
For a rough sleeper, Right Guard’s a sucker for hygiene. Despite his missing teeth and haphazard beard, he washes daily wherever he can, sometimes twice daily, and amongst his few prized possessions is always a can of antiperspirant. Which is in part where his nickname comes from, but also, of course, for the—
‘No sweat, fella, no sweat. She gone went and...’ He rubs a gnarled finger over his lips, then waves the same finger down the road, gazing in that direction. ‘Gone went and got herself caught under a transit.’
‘Shit, man,’ Smithy drops his fingers from the door frame. ‘She pull through?’
Right Guard sighs, scratches at his beard. ‘Nah, nah. But, you know, s’no sweat. She was getting old. Maybe better this way.’
‘You must have had her... What, years now?’
‘Yeah, yeah. From a pup. Fifteen years, old Piper. Yeah. Fifteen.’
‘So sorry to hear that, Right Guard,’ I lean across the centre console to say, because Smithy looks like he’s thinking about his own dog and how many more years he might have her. His French Bulldog has a respiratory disorder, which means he won’t leave her alone for more than an hour or two. Instead, he drops her at his mother’s before shift and collects her again on his way home. He dotes on the thing. The only female he’s ever committed to.
Right Guard ducks his head to better see me and gives a thumbs up. ‘No sweat, Officer Fuller. No sweat.’
‘So listen, man,’ Smithy says, pulling himself together. ‘Any more trouble from those idiots?’
‘Nah, nah, nah, s’all good. Yeah, all good.’ He shuffles the bag into a different position on his shoulder, hooking his thumb under the cord straps.
Smithy’s about as convinced as I am. Right Guard might be a friend of the local fuzz, but he’s also a man of the streets, and that means self-preservation. The poor sod’s been punched, robbed, spat at and pissed on more times than he’d ever tell us.
‘Mate, don’t give them the privilege of protection. We’ll have your back.’
‘Sure, no sweat, no sweat, Officer Smith. S’all good,’ he says with a grin, even though all three of us know we can’t always have his back. Not while he’s out here, vulnerable. It’s a vicious circle for men like Right Guard – get a beating, speak to us, get a harder beating. What I’d really love is to get him onto one of our self-defence training weeks so he can learn how to give as good back. But no matter how you work it, five against one will never end well.
Smithy glances at the clock on the dash. ‘Well, listen, you hot foot it over to the NCP. Grab yourself a bacon butty and a hot drink before they’re all gone.’
Right Guard flips a salute. ‘Yes sir, Officer. If you say so, sir.’
‘Cheeky bastard. Go on, get out of here. And you’ve got our number, use it if you need to.’ Smithy checks the mirrors and hits the indicator. ‘Laters.’
‘See you, Right Guard.’ I flip him a thumbs up, which he returns, hitching the kit bag a little higher on his shoulder and starting down the length of the pedestrianised High Street to get to the multi-storey car park and breakfast.
I watch him go before we turn up the hill out of sight.
‘He doesn’t look right without Piper,’ my partner mutters.
Smithy’s concentrated glare is focused on the road and the houses on either side of us, but his mind’s still back there with the old fella. I know for a fact that he’s sometimes brought his own dog round this way on a day off. A play date for Millie maybe. Or to check on Right Guard. My guess is he still will. Perhaps more so now the old guy’s alone. Right Guard hid it well, but he’s got to be feeling it. Fifteen years with the only friend you’ve got in the world? Of all the ways his life is shit, this might just be the thing that tips him over the edge.
We patrol for another three quarters of an hour before a call comes in for assistance at Tredegar Park. We’re at the other end of the town, so blue light it and still get there in under five minutes. Smithy’s a mean driver when he needs to be.
‘You can let go now,’ he says, as we reach the car park and he pulls up besides two other marked units. I drop my hand from the door frame and I’m out the second he stops.
We hear the shouts even without the pram brigade pointing out which direction to go. And as we hoof it through the tree line into the wide open space of the playing field, I clock one black uniform kneeling to the ground, suspect face down and pinned beneath him. I can’t see who it is from here, but he points to where another uniform is having less success with his suspect. We both run for him, but Smithy’s got a few years on me and gets there first. The suspect’s rolling around on the grass, trying everything to resist being trapped like his friend. Meanwhile the copper, whose ginger bonce I recognise as Jaffa’s, is doing everything he can to not let go of the slippery so and so.
Smithy grabs a fistful of red t-shirt and hauls the wiry culprit an inch into the air before landing him on the grass. Jaffa wastes no time in putting his knee to his back and releasing his cuffs from his belt while Smithy locks his hands around the boys’ wrists. Because that’s all he is. A boy. All fury and thunder, panting his rage and saliva into the dirt.
‘You’re hurting my back, you fuckers.’
‘Keep still then,’ Jaffa replies, getting one cuff on, but the kid twists his right hand free of Smithy’s pincer grip. This time it’s Jaffa who grabs hold, and with great satisfaction gets him in the other cuff, snapping it shut.
‘Fucking serious. Get off me. Get your fucking hands off me.’ Spit flies from his mouth, runs down his chin. ‘Bastards. You can’t do this. I’ll fucking sue you. Get your. Fucking hands. Off me.’
‘Sorry, no can do,’ Smithy says, his palm on the back of the boy’s shoulder blades, waiting out his rage. ‘And you need to calm down, mate. Make this easier for all of us.’
‘My father’s a lawyer. He’ll fucking sue your arses. All your arses.’
‘I don’t think so, mate.’
‘I’m not your fucking mate. And I’m telling you, you’ll never work for the pigs again, you tossers. I know my rights.’
‘Excellent. So my colleague doesn’t have to read them, then.’
‘Fuck off. You’re in so much shit right now, you’ve no idea. My father’s the best lawyer in South Wales.’
Smithy laughs. ‘Farmer, your dad’s still doing a stretch for armed robbery, last time I looked.’
The boy stills. Smithy lets go of his shoulders and Farmer raises his head an inch, peering up and squinting against the sun, only to be met by Smithy’s welcoming grin.
‘Bollocks.’ He drops his head back to the grass.
‘Yeah, sorry, son, we meet again. What is it this time?’
‘Nothing,’ he mutters to the dirt, all piss and fire well and truly extinguished. ‘I wasn’t doing nothing.’
Now that Jaffa can get a word in, he tells the kid on the ground, ‘You are under arrest for suspicion of indecent exposure. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?’
I look over to where a PC I recognise, but whose name I don’t recall, is helping his cuffed suspect to his feet. I pick up his lid, which he must have lost in the scuffle, and brush it down.
‘Cheers, mate,’ he says, taking it from me. Cartwright, his name tag reads, and I remember him now, from the Tredegar Park ward, only recently transferred from Monmouthshire. A big lad, he has at least five inches in height on Jaffa and a lot more than that in girth. But for all that, his suspect, a dark-haired, dark-eyed, sullen-looking teen, doesn’t seem to be going anywhere in a hurry.
‘Seems you got the better end of the deal,’ I say, and with the sparky Farmer now on his feet but with a face like a slapped arse, we walk back across the field.
‘Don’t you believe it,’ Cartwright says. ‘Put up a good chase.’ Then to the kid, ‘You should be killing it on the sports athletics team, pal, not out here acting the idiot – there are no medals for that.’
Farmer would have had a comeback to that, but not this one. He just turns his face to his shoulder and rubs his nose over his Lyle and Scott t-shirt. My guess is, a run-in with the cops isn’t something he does every day. I want to ask him what he’s wasting his time with this Farmer prick for, but who am I to cast aspersions. I don’t know the kid. I don’t know Farmer. I only know their types. I wish they didn’t have types, but they do.
Once both Jaffa and Cartwright have their suspects in the back of their respective cars, and we’re waiting on a meat wagon to pick up the more hot-headed of the two, I ask what it was all about.
‘This one,’ Jaffa says, nodding towards his detainee, ‘has been exposing himself to the young mothers in the park.’
‘Well that’s new for him,’ Smithy says. ‘His usual MO is shooting his mouth off and being an antagonising little prick.’
‘What about yours?’ I say to Cartwright, because the lad on the back seat of Cartwright’s car, who’s close to welling up, does not look like your average willy wagger.
‘Along for the ride, I guess. Peer pressure, maybe.’
‘You think it’s necessary to take him in?’
‘Fuller,’ Smithy says behind me. ‘Have you had a lobotomy?’
‘Not that I’m aware of.’
‘Then you know he should be booked in and questioned. Plus he tried to evade our good colleagues here; what does that say about him?’
I snort a soft laugh. ‘Well I’d run too, if I saw you loping my way at full pelt. But forget it. Just a suggested judgement call, that’s all. Kid looks like a warning might be enough. Save on paperwork, custody space, and parental strife.’
Jaffa shrugs, uninterested in the debate or whatever Cartwright might decide to do. He’s more concerned with the police van pulling in to the car park to taxi his man to the booking-in suite at the hotel Newport Central.
‘I’ll take him in and see what the skipper says,’ Cartwright confirms, as if there was never any doubt. ‘He might give us something that’ll drop his friend here in it, and either way maybe the experience will be a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing.’
‘Good man.’ Smithy rounds our squad car to the driver’s side. ‘Fuller, shift your arse. I need some calories to replace the ones I just lost.’
I get in and click the seatbelt in place.
‘Cheers for all your hard work there, by the way,’ my partner says, manoeuvring around Farmer’s transportation. I peer at him sideways and register the smirk peeling back his lips.
‘You need the experience more than me,’ I say, as we roll to the exit and I watch a woman take a young child from her 4x4 and point to us. I wave. The toddler gawks wide-eyed and open-mouthed, only breaking out into a grin after a few whispered words in his ear from his mother. He wobbles his hand back and forth in a wave. I smile and wave again, wondering who we are this time – PC Plum? Officer Dibble? A little young yet for Officer Barbrady.
‘Besides,’ I add, as we pull up at the park’s exit, ‘doesn’t hurt for you to earn your wage now and then.’
We slot into the traffic and head back to the town. ‘For that, Alice, the Milky Bars are on you. I’ll have a large, please, not one of those pathetic ones you got me the last time.’
Smithy’s mood must be on the up-swing if he’s using my old nickname – Alice, as in Wonderland, owing to the fact I’m a quiet observer more than I am a talker. When I first joined up, this made them think I was living in my imagination half the time, or in some kind of internal utopia. But once they knew me better, it was too late. Once a nickname sticks, it sticks.
There’s a queue inside the newsagents and, despite the offer from an old gentleman to go in front of him, which I politely decline, I stand in line and wait. But I’ve only been there less than a minute when Smithy’s tooting on the horn. He’s put the blues on and is waving to get my attention. I brush past the others in the queue.
‘Excuse me, excuse me. Sorry.’ I drop the chocolate bars and Smithy’s bottle of Coke on the counter. ‘So sorry. Got to go.’
I run from the shop while adjusting the volume dial on my radio; I didn’t hear anything come through. Jumping in the car, I’m pulling the belt over me, bracing for Smithy to floor it, adrenaline flooding my body, so that when we don’t seem to be going anywhere, I snap at my colleague. ‘What you waiting for?’
‘Changed my mind,’ he says with a soft sigh, elbow resting on the door and brown eyes calm. ‘Think I’ll have a Mars bar instead, mate.’
*
By lunchtime I feel like I’ve done a full shift, though compared to some days, this one’s been tame so far. Apart from providing assistance to detain the willy wagger in the park, we cautioned a first-time shoplifter in Tesco Extra – a thirty-three-year-old mum who attempted to leave the store with four large tins of baby formula in her shoulder bag; stopped a construction worker for driving with an unsecured load on his open flat bed truck, and waited while he re-secured the two dozen or so pieces of plastic guttering which he claimed must have worked loose during the journey; and also attended a one-person RTC in the multi-storey car park where an elderly woman driver had misjudged the size of her Picasso and the proximity of the stone barrier preventing cars from plummeting to the storey below. No harm done, but a lot of posturing needed to calm the woman’s nerves. Something that, it turns out, Smithy is particularly good at. His way with the ladies knows no age limit. By the time we were waving her off, the pensioner had all but given him her number.
Once we stop to eat, I’m glad of the break and the silence in the car. As my partner chews on his Mexican chicken baguette while scrolling through something on his phone, I stare down the busy lunchtime street in the direction of John Frost Square, or what’s left of it since they remodelled the shopping centre. What used to be a square is now more of a rectangular plaza linking two of the indoor precincts together. The whole area is pedestrianised and we’re parked way up on Charles Street outside an empty hairdresser’s, its glass-fronted window pasted with red and yellow posters of some circus long been and gone.
I glance to Smithy, but he’s lost to his phone and his food. I finish my sandwich and wipe my mouth with the napkin.
‘Hey, mate. You ever heard of a dealer named Stokes?’ I ask, peeling the lid off my latte and blowing on it.
‘Stokes... Go by any other name?’
I press the lid back on. ‘Don’t know.’
‘What’s he look like?’
Smithy’s not curious why I’m asking, but he is looking at me for an answer. He can see I don’t have one. ‘Not giving me much to go on here, mate.’
‘Local. Deals out of John Frost Square sometimes. Pot for the kids, that kind of thing.’
Smithy stares down the street as if that might jog his memory. I’m thinking this is going nowhere but it was worth a shot, when he says, ‘Could be Cranky.’
‘Cranky?’
‘He might be a Stokes. Don’t quote me on that, but he’s the only local dealer whose full name I don’t know.’
I nod and we say nothing more. Smithy goes back to his phone, hooking up with the girl from last night maybe, or setting up a new date for tonight; either way, he’s not interested in why I’m poking around. But several hours later when we’re halfway through the afternoon shift and taking a slow drive down through Upper Dock Street near the bus station, Smithy points out a lanky lad with pipe cleaner legs in skin-tight denim and a black and white wool jacket zipped up to his throat. A patchy attempt at a beard coats the pale face beneath the hood, and where his head is dipped, small eyes dart left and right while he takes broad quick strides across the road. He glances towards our car, then away again, thick-soled ankle boots slapping over the damp pavement where a light rain has fallen. His back’s to us now and I watch him go, not altering his pace or his loping gait.
‘That’s your man,’ Smithy says, though I’d already guessed. ‘That’s Cranky.’
