| |
‘Do the loop again. I want another look at him.’
My partner sighs. ‘If you insist.’
We round the block and get back on to High Street. I point to the Loading Only bay and Smithy brings the car to a stop at the rear of a Transit making a delivery. Its driver glances at us sideways, but I’m more interested in the side road behind him that joins up with this one. The speed Cranky’s walking, I don’t have to wait long for him to emerge. He crosses the road and then my view is blocked by the van, but my partner picks up the commentary.
‘Passing the entrance to the arcade, heading to town.’ Smithy flicks the indicator and gets us a little closer, pulling into the bay in front of the indoor market. From there, I watch the lean figure swagger past Subways and the amusement arcade, before pausing outside the boarded-up newsagents. He takes something from his jacket pocket and ducks his head. A plume of smoke rises a second later. Leaning against the closed shop, his back and one boot propped up against the shutters, he looks up and down the street as he smokes. His gaze doesn’t linger in our direction, so I don’t think he’s clocked us. Or clocked that we’ve clocked him, at least.
‘You’re sure that’s Cranky? A dealer?’
Smithy narrows his eyes at me, which I take as a yes. I unclip the seatbelt.
‘I might just have a word with him.’
‘Whoa, mate.’ His hand’s on my arm, my other arm’s reaching for the door handle.
‘I want to feel him out, that’s all.’
My partner shifts in his seat to look at me. It’s a look that says I must need a lie down.
‘Fuller, what is it with you today? The fella’s only having a smoke. If you’ve got a wasp up your arse about him, you’re not doing yourself any favours approaching him without good reason.’
I let go of the door handle and drop back into the seat. He’s right. Of course he’s right. I’d do well not to show my hand yet.
Smithy doesn’t push further, but he shifts in his seat like a drug stakeout wasn’t on our agenda today and he’s not skipping through hoops about it. He’ll get over it. I’m more concerned about how well Anna knew this Stokes, whoever the hell he really is, and where she knew him from. How had she come across a dealer? Did he go to her college once? Her school? Did they date?
My hand drops to my thigh with a slap, for all the ones like Cranky, pathetic little nothings with their blinkered vision and their selfish needs, and all they do is take. Money. Drugs. Whatever they can from whoever they can. Never thinking about the trail of disaster they’re leaving behind. Not caring even if they do think about it. Why should they care? This life is all about them, isn’t it? Never mind that Anna came from a good family. Never mind that she was a decent person with an important career ahead of her. Worth a hundred times what this waster will ever be.
Cranky grounds the cigarette with his boot and walks the few yards to McDonald’s where he disappears inside. The taste of stale coffee from earlier lingers on my tongue and I tell Smithy I need to stop to pick up some water.
‘Sure,’ my partner says. ‘But not there you don’t.’
Tired maybe of this waiting game that he perceives as a waste of time, Smithy drives us down the High Street and passes McDonald’s without slowing.
*
It’s mid afternoon, only a few more hours to go, and we’re back where we started this morning, parked beside the Indian. No Right Guard this time, but a group of men hang around outside a bar further up and they’re spiking my radar. They stumbled out onto the pavement ten minutes ago and still haven’t spotted us yet, busy as they are with whatever it is that preoccupies them. Heads together, it’s hard to see what they’re doing, but my guess is it isn’t good. Two of the group retreat inside, leaving two behind, neither of which appear too sturdy on their feet. Another reason perhaps why we haven’t been spotted.
‘WOFT, mate,’ Smithy says beside me. I stare at him, drawing a blank. He tuts. ‘Waste of fucking time, Alice. Just a bunch of pissheads in the middle of the afternoon.’
‘Right. DHTC, Smithy, lad. Doesn’t hurt to check.’
Ignoring his huff and muttered protests, I get out of the car, press on my lid as I walk the pavement, and tuck my fingers inside my vest. I’m about ten metres away before I’m spotted. ‘Alright, lads?’
The one closest to me drops his hands into his black bomber jacket and looks to the floor to steady himself, but it only has the opposite effect. The other, older but perhaps none the wiser, pulls out a packet of cigarettes and promptly lights up.
‘How’s it going, Officer?’ Bomber Jacket says, when his head comes up. Truth be told, he’s a bit old to still be wearing a bomber jacket – his balding pate tells me that – but he looks like the type of guy who dismisses age as just a number.
‘Had a drink, boys?’
Smoker is sucking on the Lambert and Butler as if his lungs, or at least his freedom, depend on it. He has trouble with looking me in the eye, but not with puffing plumes of smoke in my direction.
‘Alright, mate?’ Bomber Jacket says, with a brief wave to Smithy when he approaches. ‘Was about to tell your butty here that we’ve been celebrating Terry’s birthday. Right, Ter?’
He doesn’t look at Terry when he says this, and Terry doesn’t look at any of us, he just goes right on clawing at the cancer stick. I want to say, ‘Don’t bother, mate. It’s not working.’ But what I say instead is, ‘Either of you got anything on you we should know about?’
‘Nah, nah, nah.’ Bomber Jacket shakes his head. It’s a bad idea. I have to put out my hand to steady him. ‘Sorry, mate. Nah. Not at all. Like a pint or two, that’s it for me.’
I look to Smithy, who tips his chin in agreement. We’ll soon be getting high off the fumes.
‘Okay, well, I’m PC Steve Fuller and my colleague is PC Neil Smith, and we have reason to believe you may be in possession of an illegal substance. If you do have something on you, it might be easier for you fellas to just go ahead and turn out your pockets.’
Bomber Jacket looks to Terry, who’s still trying to draw on the cigarette even though it’s down to the butt. With no help from that quarter, he relents and pulls his pockets inside out. Nothing.
‘Take off the jacket please, fella,’ Smithy says, pulling on some latex gloves.
I do the same as I move in front of his friend, because I know a runner when I see one, and I’m betting by his lack of eye contact that Terry fancies his chances.
‘Terry what?’ I ask.
He flicks the cigarette end, and hard brown eyes come up to mine. His face is drawn and overripe, as if he’s been in the sun too long. I’d put him at late fifties, early sixties, with a lifelong weakness for chemicals that haven’t agreed with him or his skin all that well, and also an out-of-towner – his is not a face that’s familiar.
‘Terence Morley,’ he says, with a voice as delicate as gravel in a coffee grinder.
Beside him, Bomber Jacket is turning out his trouser pockets and coming up empty. But Terry helpfully pulls from his own back pocket a small cellophane packet of weed. I take it from him. He glares at me as if to say, that’s it. Which immediately makes me think it isn’t.
‘Hands in front of you, please, sir.’ He’s complying to a point, so far, but I don’t trust him. I snap the cuffs on his wrists and ask him to turn around, face the wall. He does, though only in his own time and with a dead-eyed stare that says he’s spent all his life coming up against bastard coppers. Bastard coppers like me who try to stop him living the way he wants to. No harm to anyone, right? Never leaving him in peace.
I pat down his t-shirt, catching nothing but tin ribs beneath. Then his waist, the pockets of his denims.
‘What’s this, mate?’ I ask, feeling something in the seat of his jeans.
‘My arse.’
Beside me, Smithy finishes his fruitless search of Bomber Jacket and tells him to go back inside or go home. The man’s reluctant at first, but after some persuasion, he mumbles a sorry to his friend, then takes off down the street. Smithy watches him leave, to be sure he’s not so drunk that he’s about to wander off the kerb and into traffic. But I’m more concerned with this one’s extra padding.
‘Want to tell me what you’ve got down there, Terence?’
‘My arse, I told you,’ he spits viciously over his shoulder.
‘Alright, mate.’
I yank back the waistband on his jeans, but it’s not enough to see anything. I don’t really want to ask him to drop his trousers here, this close to the High Street and the shoppers out with their families. I try folding down the waistband, but I still need more wiggle room. Smithy moves to the other side of me, offering as much privacy as we’re going to get, and with little other choice, I go on in, sliding my gloved hand down into the seat of his jeans, palm to backside. Not where I choose to be, but my fingers immediately land on what I’m after and I’m guessing it’s not his wallet he keeps there.
There’s a bit of resistance as I pull the object free, and when it comes loose, only three small pieces of tape are still attached to the corners, the fourth I assume still stuck to his right cheek. It’s a clear packet about the size of a small envelope with several smaller cellophane bags inside, the contents not weed but a fine white powder.
‘Got any more squirrelled away?’ I ask.
‘It’s for my own personal use,’ Terry mumbles, dropping his forehead against the wall of the pub.
‘Shit, mate,’ Smithy says, with a light laugh. ‘That’s some birthday gift to yourself. Hoping not to see another, are you?’
I take Terence by the elbow to lead him to the car, while from behind me comes a muttered, ‘Personal use, my arse.’
*
We’ve only just got him booked in to his room for the night and returned to our unit when Control issues a request for an urgent response to a silent call on St Edward Street, suspected domestic disturbance. Meaning that whoever called in hasn’t spoken, but indicated assistance is required by hitting 55 on their phone when prompted by the operator. The sad fact is, not everybody knows about The Silent Solution, but a silent call on its own might not be enough to get the police to your door. Plus, like everything in life, it’s a program with well-meaning intentions that’s open to abuse from less well-meaning citizens, and for some lonely old souls, having members of the local constabulary rush to your attention of an evening is all a bit of fun and excitement and passes the time. But for all this, it doesn’t stop us treating a 55 call as serious. If I had my way, and manpower wasn’t an issue, we would respond to every silent call, 55 or not. Domestic violence is the biggest threat in our society and biggest killer – we’ve seen that first-hand. So for every ten false calls we might attend, one could save someone’s life. And that one is worth the hassle of all the others.
I’m guessing my partner feels the same as I do, because the second I’ve advised Control to show us as deploying to the scene, Smithy floors it across town with not only the sirens and lights blazing, but also his language for the idiots who’ve double parked on the narrow streets, making it difficult to get through at speed. This is Smithy in take-no-prisoners mode.
St Edward Street is a narrow dead-end road, lined with a row of terraced houses on either side. At this time of the day, only about half of the street’s cars are parked up at the kerbside, but before we reach the house the call came from, Smithy U-turns and pulls up a good eight or nine houses down, out of view. We can’t be entirely sure what we’ll find, or what response we might get when we knock on the door, so we’ll need to be cautious. We don’t even know if the caller was female or male, but if someone really is in danger, the last thing we want is to come away with nothing, leaving a potential victim in a more precarious situation than they were in before.
The house we’re after is about two-thirds of the way up. On the other side of it is Graham Street, another row of terraces, with back to back gardens, walls and fences – nowhere for an escapee to run. All the same, it’s nice to get confirmation that a second unit is in attendance, on St Woolos Road around the corner, if we need them, a luxury we rarely have.
Smithy and I both lid up and walk along the pavement. The street’s quiet, and as we draw closer, we listen and watch for any signs of movement from inside. The house is pale green, painted some time ago now, judging by the grime streaking a thick line from the gutter all the way to the ground. Three windows, two up and one down, are the old-fashioned, wood-framed kind, possibly single-paned, and all with net curtains drawn so it’s difficult to see anything through them as we approach. There are no cars parked at the kerb directly outside, but a couple of wheelie bins are lined up against the wall beside a food recycling caddy, its contents crammed to the point of pushing the lid open. There’s a faint waft of sewage in the air, but it could be the bins.
I knock at the PVC front door, hard enough to be heard, not too hard to panic whoever is inside. Smithy steps back, looking up at the windows, shakes his head. I knock again. There’s no movement from beyond the glass panels, and the longer we wait, the more uneasy I feel. My heart thumps once, hard in my rib cage, like a punch. I take a slow breath to settle it. Smithy’s up at the window, cupping his hands against the reflection to peer in. He taps at the glass, testing to see how tough it is. My heart thuds again and I press my palm to my chest, willing it to ease. My vest feels heavy over my shoulders. I adjust it, but it makes little difference.
‘Steve!’
‘What?’
‘What you waiting for, mate?’ He throws me a glare as he steps up to the front door and crouches to snap open the letterbox. After a second or two, he calls out. ‘Hello?’ Listens for a response. ‘Police. Could you open up, please?’
He gets up, tries the handle, but it’s locked. ‘Something’s not right. I think I can hear something. We’re gonna have to go in.’ He bellows through the letterbox a second time. ‘Police. Open up, or we’ll have to force entry.’
Smithy steps back to radio in the situation while looking at the upstairs windows, then returns to the downstairs one. His fingers press at the glass pane again, wondering if he can get in through there. That’s when my feet finally move. There’s no time to wait for an officer with an enforcer to arrive, we need to get inside. Possible threat to life.
I thunder my fist against the plastic door, yell, ‘Police. We’re coming in.’
Switching my bodycam on to record, I take a step back and release the baton from my vest pocket and flick it to expand.
‘Window,’ my colleague says, deciding that’s our best option, but just as I’m pulling my arm back to strike the side pane, a key turns in the lock.
Smithy wastes no time. As soon as the door separates from the frame he pushes forward, stepping inside and shouting instructions to turn around, put hands on head. I go in behind him, clocking a middle-aged man in lounge pants, bare-chested, faded off-green tattoos across his arms and back. He doesn’t fight Smithy who’s got the cuffs on him before I’ve even reached the other end of the narrow hallway, but he’s got a lot to say.
‘Fucking bitch. You won’t find her in there.’ His words slur.
The sitting room’s a tip, but empty. The kitchen too.
‘Do you see what she did to me? Do you see? Fucking skank.’
‘Yeah, alright, mate. Calm yourself.’ Smithy’s all sympathy. ‘Control, one suspect detained. Searching the property. Stand by.’
I start up the stairs, passing pieces of Lego on the worn carpet, and at the top a giant teddy bear propped up but tipping to one side. On the magnolia painted wall just above it is a streak of red, like someone’s trailed Ketchup with a finger. Except it’s fresh, and probably not Ketchup.
‘The bitch attacked me. She fucking attacked me. She needs locking up.’
I hear Smithy guiding the man into the sitting room, their voices disappearing down a long tunnel. The rest of the house is silent. And I’m right back in that place; the one where, for all I know, time has stopped. Nothing moves, nothing breathes. Except this time it feels like I don’t belong here. Or that I’m not here at all...
My feet go on moving because they have to. I force myself to focus and go through the motions. Check the bathroom. Empty. First bedroom on the landing. A child’s room. Blue. Polystyrene spitfires hang on strings from the ceiling. Bed unmade. LazyTown cover. More Lego on the floor, games for an Xbox, Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto – how old is this kid? Empty. Next. Box room, filled with junk. Bags, books, a mess, boxes ripped open and everything scattered. Empty. Back out on the landing, only one room left, the one at the end. She has to be here somewhere, but she’s too quiet. Or maybe it’s just that my head is fuzzy and I’m not hearing all that well. I stumble, my palm slapping against the wall. I’m panting for breath, yanking at the collar of my polo shirt... What the fuck?
‘I’m telling you, she fucking went for me. You’ve got eyes, haven’t you? Look!’
The man’s shouts drift up the stairs and I hear Smithy’s equally loud response to get himself heard and maintain some control. It snaps me back to what I’m supposed to be doing. I lurch forward to the door at the end of the hall and thrust it open so it swings back and lands hard against the inside wall, and there she is, sat on the edge of the bed.
I’m halfway across the room before she raises her head.
‘PC Steve Fuller, South East Wales Police,’ I say, on autopilot. ‘And I have to make you aware I’m recording this, okay?’
She nods, as automatic as my response. Limp strands of hair fall around a damp face wracked by time and no easy passage through it. There are no obvious marks on her cheeks, no signs of violence on her arms, thin and bare beneath her t-shirt. But her hands where she holds them upturned in her lap are bloody.
‘What’s your name?’ I ask.
‘Paula.’ Her voice is dry, cracked. ‘Paula Joseph.’
‘Was it you who put in the call, Paula?’
Her eyes are dark when they come up to meet mine, their colour indecipherable. She nods once.
‘Are you okay? Are you hurt?’
Her brows furrow. She’s not sure how to answer that.
‘Can you explain to me what happened?’
She looks from me to the door, then back to me again. I cross the room to ease it to within an inch of closed, and when I return, I sit on the bottom of the bed. Under the movement, she sags like a rag doll.
‘I thought he was going to...’ She stares at her hands.
‘Fucking bitch!’ rings out from downstairs.
She doesn’t react. There’s a strange calm about her, the polar opposite of the man waxing lyrical with my colleague in the sitting room.
‘Is he your husband?’ I ask, even though she wears no wedding ring.
‘Partner.’
‘And is there anyone else in the house?’
‘Just us. My son is with his father tonight.’
‘What happened here?’
Her tongue comes out to run along her bottom lip and her eyebrows flex like she’s trying to remember, gaze still fixed on her fingers.
‘Are you hurt?’ I ask again.
She shakes her head.
‘Is that your blood?’
A pause. Then a whispered, ‘No.’
‘His?’
There’s a story here. Not just whatever has gone on this afternoon, whatever argument struck up. But a whole backstory. Two entire lives. Three, including the son who’s not here. There’s history that I could hazard a guess at, but it’s irrelevant to me, here, now, as a police officer. I’m encouraged to use my instinct but not act on it unless I have something to base it on. How can that be right? If only I could see just one fresh bruise on her face. Just one.
‘Paula, I need you to tell me as best you can what happened this afternoon. How you’ve got his blood on you.’
Her hands tremble as she raises them in front of her. ‘I gouged him. I was going for his eyes. But he was quicker than me. He was like this. He had my wrists like this.’ She clamps the fingers of her left hand around the wrist of the right. ‘So I...’ She curls her fingers to claws and thrusts them twice towards herself. ‘But I could only catch his cheek.’
‘How did it start?’
Her hands come down with a hard slap against her jeans. ‘He didn’t want Ricky to have the money I saved for his school trip. Said his father should pay because he’s got more than us.’
‘What then?’
‘He started searching the house for it, saying he knew I had it here somewhere. But I didn’t want him to find it. So I...’ She flips her hands to stare at them again. ‘I went for him.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I was yanking on him, on his t-shirt, trying to get him to stop. The money’s Ricky’s. I kept it especially for him.’
‘What did he do when you grabbed him?’
She shrugs once. ‘He was yelling, tried batting me off. But I was just so mad.’
‘Who struck first, Paula?’
She nods, slow, and as if she might not stop. ‘It was me.’
‘And how did he react?’
‘He pushed me off him.’
‘Were you hurt?’
She stops nodding, but her eyes seem dead, and my heart sinks. I hope she hasn’t taken something. That’ll complicate things.
‘Not really. Maybe where I hit the cupboard.’
‘Where was that?’
She reaches for the bottom of her t-shirt, bunches it in her fingers so it lifts over her right hip. I have to bite my tongue. Her arms and face might be clear, but her torso is a mess. Most of the bruises are old, fading, some scabbed cuts, neat round scars shaped like the end of a cigarette. But among all that is a patch of red and a track of scuffed skin that would be a new bruise by tomorrow. She lets the t-shirt fall. She knows what I’ve seen, but she doesn’t care.
‘He grabbed my wrists to stop me. And when I scratched him, I knew I’d caught him hard. After he pushed me, I ran. Up here and into the bathroom, locked the door. That’s when I called.’ She sighs, looks up to the window and the net curtains separating her life in here from that one out there. ‘I thought this time might be it. I’ve hurt him before, but not like this. Except he started crying. Outside the door. Me on one side of it, him on the other and he’s crying. But it was all a lie, it always is. He thinks I’m stupid. That’s why I didn’t come out until I heard you downstairs.’
She turns her head to face me. And now I see they’re green, the colour of her eyes.
‘You’ll have to arrest me, won’t you?’ She shifts on the bed to face me, dropping her voice to a whisper. ‘I want you to arrest me.’
‘If your partner wishes to press charges. But, Paula, you know you might not be detained for long, don’t you? Overnight at most. Maybe not even that.’
‘Yes,’ she answers. But I’m having trouble reading what her intentions are, what she thinks a few hours away from the man will achieve.
‘If this is something that has happened before, or happens regularly for you, we can refer you to someone who’ll help. You understand what I’m saying?’ I lower my voice. ‘You and your son have the right to feel safe in your own home.’
She doesn’t answer, but gets up, slides open a drawer on the wardrobe and takes out a grey hoodie which she tugs on over her head. As she does, her t-shirt rides up and I catch again the twisted mosaic imprinted over the pale skin, on her hips, and on her waist that’s barely there. I drop my eyes away and get up from the bed.
‘I need to talk to my partner. Can you stay in here a moment?’
I’m out of the room before she gives an answer. And at the top of the stairs I grip the bannister, sucking in a few deep breaths to dowse the burning in my chest.
I’ve seen the damage domestic abuse does time and again, on the body, on the mind. But today it makes me feel sick to my stomach. As I descend the stairs and my partner’s voice drifts out of the open sitting-room door, calm, authoritative, reasoning with the unreasonable man, I don’t know whether I want to yell or throw up.
