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The few flowers left are dead. The plastic wrapping that pins them hopelessly upright to the bridge’s mesh barrier above the motorway shudders with the movement of the traffic passing by beneath. A memorial site no one wants any more. The biting evening wind stings the bruise Simons put on my cheek, and my head thuds hard enough that it sends the blood rushing through my temple. They’re the only things I can feel.
I crouch on the bridge, loosen and unwind the wire holding the decayed bouquet in place, my focus drifting up to the point on the carriageway where it happened. Blue eyes, pale skin, black hair tangled up in the gold necklace. ANNA. Her hand in mine, her fingers cool, the curl of her lips as she tried to smile at my terrible jokes, the ones meant to distract her from the realisation that she would never be the same Anna again, no matter what. Corny one-liners to distract her from the fact that actually right then, at that very moment, she was dying.
And maybe those distractions worked, because the one concern bothering her above all others, the thing she wanted me to do that she couldn’t emphasise enough, was to delete those messages from her phone. Not just the ones to Stokes, but also the ones she’d sent Simons in desperation. A last wish I knew I couldn’t make good on. And so sitting in the hospital corridor while she bled out on the surgeon’s table, her life cut short in the most gruesome way, her parents learning that their lives were changed forever, I was left with an emptiness filling only with doubt. That maybe the words I’d spoken weren’t enough. My comfort, not enough. My years in the job and the uniform, not enough. None of it enough. How could it be? And later, thinking if I fell back on my instincts and tried to do right by her, then I could at least feel better about myself, sleep at night, chalk it up as another one I did my best for and move on.
So why the fuck haven’t I? Why did confronting Simons and getting to the real truth not help? Because I’m here. On the bridge. With the dead flowers in my hand, and every part of me numb except for that hard pulse in my temple reminding me I’m alive, even though it doesn’t feel like it any more.
‘Hey, mate?’
I snap my head up, enough to see the wheels of a bike and a young lad in the saddle.
‘You alright?’ he asks.
‘What?’
‘Is everything okay?’
He points at me, and I look down at myself. I’m still crouched, one hand gripping the dead flowers, the other clinging to the bridge’s mesh barrier, the thundering rush hour traffic unrelenting below.
‘Yeah. Yeah,’ I say, stumbling as I get to my feet and my head spins, my cheek throbs.
‘Only, you don’t look alright. Do you need some help?’
The kid’s only about sixteen, seventeen. He’s in joggers with faded knees and an Adidas t-shirt that sags around the neckline. Tufts of mousy-brown hair poke out from beneath the baseball cap he wears, under which small eyes study me closer than I’m comfortable with.
‘I’m fine.’
He nods but doesn’t move, instead resting his hand on the metal rail of the bridge as he slips his feet in the pedals and waits. He’s waiting for me to go first. He thinks I might jump, and he’s waiting to see what happens. Maybe he’s got a phone in his pocket, ready to record the whole thing. Something to show his mates, put on YouTube or TikTok. Saw this guy jump. It was frigging awesome. You should have seen the mess it made. Well, you can. Here you go...
‘Someone you know?’
He points at me again, this time to the dead flowers hanging from my fingers. I look at them as I consider the answer to that.
‘Not really.’
An HGV thunders by underneath and the boy shouts over it. ‘I think I know you.’
His head leans to one side, trying to figure out where from. I could probably help him out with that, and on another day I might be able to stick a pin in it right away, but today his face looks the same as all the others.
‘Yeah, I do. I do know you. I thought so. You’re that officer.’ He smiles as the memory resurfaces. I hope it’s a good one.
I start walking down the bridge, but the peel of tyres over the tarmac come with me. Not now, kid; of all the times, not now.
‘You saved my great-grandnanna’s life. Yeah, you did, that was you.’
He cycles up beside me, still holding on to the rail with one hand, the other on the bike handle to steer, his head flipping my way to get a good look at me.
‘It was definitely you.’
‘What was her name?’ I ask, to humour him, and so I can get off this bridge and in the car and go home.
‘Selina Middleton. Mama.’
I glance at the kid. His grin broadens. ‘Yeah, you remember.’
‘I remember Mama,’ I say, though I hadn’t thought about her in the time since. It was about a week before Anna. Robbery in progress, suspects arrested on scene. ‘How’s she doing?’
‘She’s good, she’s good. Thanks to you. Out of the hospital and back home.’
‘On Jones Street?’
‘Shit yeah, she wouldn’t go anywhere else. My mother tried to get her to stay with us, but... Nope.’
I remember the old woman’s anger at the bare cheek of these two men twice the size of her, one of whom had landed her a hard wallop to the head while they were robbing her of anything she owned that was worth more than a couple of quid.
‘She’s a tough lady,’ I say.
‘She thinks she is. Eighty seven and acts like she’s eighteen, my mother says. But they’d have killed her if you hadn’t shown up. I saw the blade you took from him.’
‘He wouldn’t have used it. Mostly it’s just for show.’
I recall the boy now as one of the small crowd that turned up at the same time the wagons did.
‘This is Mama we’re talking about. You think she would have let them walk out of there with all that stuff? My great-grampa’s medals and all that shit? They’d have had to kill her to get past her.’
I smile at the memory of the woman, four-foot-nothing-much, white hair a mass of curls over her scalp, the fire in her watery blue eyes and the steel poker Jonesy had to pry from her fingers. The smile sends a shooting pain searing up through my cheekbone and I wince, my hand going instinctively to my face.
‘That work-related?’ the kid asks.
‘Something like that.’
‘Yeah, you must get a lot of that,’ he says, and I glance at him, but he’s looking at the path ahead of him now and not me.
We reach the end of the bridge where it splits into steps to one side and a ramp the other. I head for the steps, and the brakes on the lad’s bike squeal as he slows to a stop.
‘Well, I just want to say thanks,’ he says.
I nod and clamp my lips into something of a smile, but the boy’s holding out his hand. I reach over and take hold of it. His handshake is firm for his age.
‘Mama’s like the warrior in our family. She’s the one keeps us all in line. Without her, I dunno. I can’t imagine it.’
‘Send her my best wishes.’ I loosen my grip, but he’s holding on.
‘No, seriously, Officer. Thanks. Mama says thanks.’ He grins and lets my hand go.
‘Mama’s very welcome. That’s what we’re here for.’
Halfway down the steps, something makes me hesitate and turn back. The boy’s still at the top of the path, but he’s got his phone out and taps at it like he’s typing a message.
‘Hey. What’s your name?’ I call, and he looks up.
‘Boyd.’
I nod. ‘Take care, Boyd.’
‘I will. You too, Officer.’
*
Ange is out tonight. She doesn’t say where in the note propped against the kettle. Dan might know, but he’s in his room, avoiding me more than he was before. I stand in the middle of the kitchen with only the light from the hall behind me, and stare at the spot where Rumpole’s bed has been for the last seven years, wondering if things would be different if I hadn’t walked him so hard that day. If I hadn’t left him and gone away. If I’d at least been here to sit with him, put his head in my lap and just been with him at the end. I would have told him what it meant to come home to him after every shift. That no matter what had gone on, or how much shit I’d taken, he was the one constant – always pleased to see me, giving everything and demanding little in return.
‘You’ve no idea, Rumpole, old mate,’ I say, yanking open the fridge and scooping up an armful of beers, which I take out to the garage. I close the door behind me, flick on the light and clear some space to pull out a deckchair.
I neck back the first three before the ache in my face eases and my mind kick starts enough to drag the boxes across the floor towards me, the ones I’ve taken from the shelf. I flip one open and sift through certificates and photos, the old man’s not mine, and even a few copies of some case files that I suppose meant something to him in one way or another. I start on the fourth bottle, sinking down in the chair to track Peter William Fuller’s career from fresh-faced probie, right through the ranks to his final post as Chief Inspector, and including stints in just about every major department this side of the Welsh border. Dad kept badges from all the uniforms he ever wore, photographs both formal and informal, letters for everything, from promotions to new positions to thank yous from his bosses and from members of the public. I skip over them, unable to concentrate on the words.
I don’t picture Dad as the joker in the bunch, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t work with some. There are a few wind-ups among the memorabilia – a wanted poster with his face superimposed on it and a ransom of twenty chocolate eclairs for locking his keys in the squad car, back in the days when that was a mistake easy enough to do. Another is a framed mock newspaper report with a photograph of Dad in plain clothes and his arm around a high-class working girl in Piccadilly Circus, during his time at the Met. The headline reads, Shameless Sarge in Sugar Daddy Shocker! Someone had snapped the photo after he’d arrested her and was walking her to the wagon.
It’s all right here in this one box, Dad’s entire forty-year service. Boiled down to this, it’s your standard ideal career for a highly regarded and well-liked member of the Force family. And that’s the impression he gave. Shit days, missed opportunities, injustices, vile acts, viler scenes, stuff that curdled your stomach and addled your head, he never spoke about any of that. Upstanding, is the word they use for men like him. And I’d admired that. Even if my nineteen-year-old self wouldn’t have put that admiration into words or thoughts, I must have done, or why else would I have pulled on the same uniform as him?
Every son wants to please his father, that’s another thing they say. Just a shame it took until Mum died for Dad to tell me the job was never what he’d had in mind for me. By that point, he hadn’t even wanted it for himself, but he couldn’t walk away from it, wouldn’t know what to do with himself. Perhaps that’s why I’ve done such a piss-poor job in comparison. Why I haven’t pushed higher, further, like everyone expects me to. Either he set the bar too high or his expectations of me much lower.
Throwing the rest of Dad’s things back into the box, I stare at the photograph on the top, of him and Mum at some formal event. It was some ten, fifteen years ago, because Dad’s wearing his Chief Inspector’s uniform, and Mum’s all glammed up in a long silver gown, glittered handbag hooked over her wrist. She loved all that. The dinners, the pomp, the excuse to dress up and be glamorous for an evening. I’m not sure Dad did so much, but he went along with it out of duty, both to her and the job. He was a sucker for duty. Something to do with his old man being in the military, no doubt. I try to imagine that same future for Ange and I, but right this minute, I can’t even see past tonight.
I flick the lid closed on the box and pull my phone from my pocket. The beers have made my head fuzzier than it already was, and I stare a while at the blank screen before settling for something simple. I miss you. But when the ringtone sounds a few minutes later, my heart’s in my mouth.
‘Hi,’ I answer. The line crackles, but that’s it.
‘Tricia?’ I prop my elbow on the arm of the deckchair and my head in my hand. ‘Trish, are you there?’
‘Hey.’
‘How are you? Listen, I’m sorry about the messages. I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I mean—’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Only, after the weekend. I don’t want you to think—’ That it didn’t mean anything. That I’m that sort of man.
My throat is caving in on itself, and I should have eaten before I had a drink. Maybe if I had, I wouldn’t have sent the text.
‘Look, Steve, it was really nice and everything.’
I run my fingers back and forth over my forehead, skin hot, vision losing focus.
‘And in other circumstances...’
I bring the hand down to cover my eyes.
‘Steve?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I do like you. And I can’t thank you enough for Sunday—’
‘No. No need.’
That’s what we’re here for.
Silence tears a hole in the conversation, and I should say something, but I don’t know what. That my dog died. That my son’s been smoking which he got from me. I yelled at him, and Ange got mad at me, like she’s mad at me for everything, but I’m so exhausted I don’t have the energy to please her. Oh, and I went to see Simons, the man I thought was Anna’s lover, except turns out he wasn’t, turns out I got Anna completely wrong. In fact, we all did. And you know what else? I was this close to deleting messages from her phone like she asked me to, texts from her pot dealer and the man she was stalking; I almost deleted those because it was Anna’s last wish, and she’d begged me to honour it for her. But it’s okay because the job stopped me in time, stopped me from thinking for myself. The thing is, though, I can’t help wondering what other things I might have been mistaken about over the years, whether I should even be doing this job, do I even deserve it. And if not this, then what, what else am I supposed to do?
Or maybe I’ll just jump right in and tell her that lately there’s something wrong and I don’t know what the fuck it is, or what it means, but I can’t always catch my breath, it gets stuck in my chest and my heart beats so hard and so fast, and when it happens in the middle of a call-out it frightens the living shit out of me because what if I fail, what if I freeze, what if I can’t move, can’t do anything? I’m an officer, doing nothing isn’t an option. I’m an officer, for fuck’s sake.
‘Steve?’
Her voice is soft, like it was the other day with her hands holding my head after I’d hurt her, and it’s enough for my eyes to cool beneath my closed lids.
‘This is not about you, Steve. You understand that, don’t you? It’s just that it’s not fair. Not to your wife. And not to me. I couldn’t let you... I won’t...’
You won’t be the other woman.
‘Of course not. I wouldn’t expect that.’
So what did I expect? From this woman who’s already been crapped on by at least one other person in her life, and lonely as she might be, deserves better than that. Better than a man who used his fists and his words to control her, and better than a middle-aged married idiot who leaned on her too hard just so she’d make him feel better about himself. Was there much difference between the two, really? It was all taking, wasn’t it? Selfishly taking.
‘I’m not what you need, Steve.’
I drag my eyes open, stare at the wall across from me and the hundreds of tiny holes that together make up a loose circle around the space where Dan’s dart board used to hang.
‘You deserve better,’ I say, followed by a silence that goes on so long I wonder if she’s still there. But then she says, ‘So do you.’
I peer up at the ceiling, to where the steel garage door hangs over my head, its metal support struts forming a cross right above me.
‘Tricia?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Take care, alright?’
I lose it on the last word, but I don’t know if she hears or what her reply is, because I’m already hanging up and tossing the phone to the box at my feet.
I never saw Dad cry. Not even when Mum died. And so I didn’t cry either, not once I was past a certain age. Maybe that was hard to start with, I don’t remember, but it got easier. Everything does the more you do it. And it seemed like the right thing to do, a requirement even. What use are tears in this line of work? Professionalism doesn’t come with emotion, it comes with a clear head, authority, knowing your job inside out and carrying it out as best you can. In turn, professionalism fosters a level of respect from your peers and colleagues that reinforces that confidence in your abilities, reaffirms your position and your worth. Emotion – no matter what they say these days – would tear all that down in a heartbeat.
My fingers curl around the neck of a bottle on the floor, and I launch it so hard across the room that when it hits the wall with force, tiny shards of glass come back to land at my feet.
