Mal couldn’t deny that he was still on a high. Pride swelled in his chest remembering the previous night and the apprehension of Payback. The Embers Rapist had thought he’d got away with it. It had been a double whammy. Imagine if the lads from the station could have seen him. They hardly ever saw him, rather they looked through him, as if he wasn’t there at all.
But he also knew there was a darker, more substantial reason why he felt satisfied. It was times like this when he could open that small, painful box inside his chest and examine his treasured memories – her beautiful smiling face, the way he felt happy and sad at the same time when she used to sing, the way she held his hand in the dark as though it wasn’t her who was afraid, but she was trying to comfort him instead.
He’d met Layla at a gig when they were both fifteen.
His first love.
His only love, really. She was the first person to ever make him feel better than the shit on someone’s shoe. The first person to have seen the good in him. The first person to tell him that she loved him.
Yes, there had been women since, if he got lucky, but nothing serious. No one came close to Layla. And they never would. She was enshrined in perfection, as those who died young often were.
He tried to keep it that way. That’s why he kept the box so tightly shut, to keep the bad memories out, so that nothing could hurt her any more. She’d been perfect before those animals had got her, and brutally torn away her goodness, her beauty, her joy.
His beautiful Layla would never have left him, if they hadn’t…
He couldn’t bring himself to even think of the word.
They’d promised to be together for ever, but after what happened it wasn’t possible. He understood that now, although he’d fought hard at the time. That’s why he forgave her for leaving him.
Sometimes people just couldn’t go on.
When the gang who’d destroyed her were convicted, they’d been sentenced to Aversion Therapy. This was in the early days, before gangs were sent to eco-labour. It hadn’t seemed like much of a punishment to Mal, but Layla insisted on trying to put everything behind them and moving on.
A few months later, Mal and Layla had been having a quiet drink in an old-fashioned beer-and-crisps pub in the East End when one of the men walked in.
He didn’t even recognise Layla, looked right through her as she froze in fear.
They watched him having a pint with his mates, laughing, getting on with his life.
It was then that Mal realised that justice hadn’t been done.
A week later, Layla was dead.
The ‘arrest’ at the warehouse last night had been satisfying because, although he might never get justice for Layla, he could get justice for other victims. That was why he’d joined up, wasn’t it? Because he knew how it felt.
While Sarge and Bizzy had been wrestling with Payback, Mal had been sent for the recce, as was his role. He’d been securing the scene and gone into one of the old offices.
That was where he’d found the terrified woman, curled up on the floor against a wall in the shadows, her hands over her head. He’d tried to comfort her, and when she finally uncovered her face, he recognised her from the rape report files.
She wasn’t anything like his Layla.
Layla had been so small and yet so full of life. Colour and light seemed to surround her constantly – her hair, her clothes, the very air about her, were vibrant with vitality, until the end, when all her colour was drained, washed away in the murky water of the Thames.
The woman in the warehouse the previous night had been a pale ghost. But Mal had seen in her the darkness that had eaten away at Layla. When she looked up at him, her face morphed and all he could see were Layla’s big, sorrowful eyes.
She’d been through enough. So he made a decision, one that Sarge would not have approved of.
He’d let her go.
He knew he wasn’t following protocol when he’d hurried her out of one of the windows at the back of the warehouse. She didn’t need to suffer any more than she already had. The other two hadn’t even seen her. He didn’t blame them, of course, they were so wrapped up in the action.
Once she disappeared, there was a brief moment when he felt something unfamiliar, as though he had purpose or was somehow redeemed.
But that was soon replaced with a surge of panic when he heard the others return. He rushed back in and told them all was secure. Then the usual routine commenced and he hadn’t let himself think about the woman until he went to bed in the morning after the night shift. He’d hardly slept, still buzzing with the adrenaline, feeling as though he’d done something important, as though somehow part of Layla had escaped too. He closed his eyes and saw her face in his mind’s eye, her heart-breaking smile, and it calmed him.
No, Layla would never have left him, would never have thrown herself from that bridge, if she’d been able to get the justice she deserved.
The door of the office flew open, disturbing his thoughts, and Sarge strode in, followed by Bizzy.
‘Well done, lads. Good job last night,’ Sarge began. ‘But it’s a new shift now and we have another crime to think about, another arrest to plan.’
It was always like this, as if Sarge didn’t take the time to appreciate what they’d just done, to savour it. Always on to the next thing as though their achievements didn’t mean anything.
Mal wondered if Sarge had just seen too much in his long career of dealing with evil and become desensitised to it. Mal sensed that Sarge had been changing recently, although he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Was it something to worry about? A tiny bud of fear bloomed – what if Sarge was getting ready to retire? For so long he’d been like a surrogate father to Mal, better than his own shit of a bio-dad. He looked to Sarge to teach him the ways of the job, to show him how to be in the world. And what would happen to him and Bizzy if Sarge left? Without him, without his skills, his attention to detail, his drive, they’d flounder.
It was funny how sometimes, due to circumstances, you could be at the fork of a road and it was merely the toss of a coin as to which way you went. After Layla, Mal had been left with an impotent anger. It had got him into trouble a few times, and he could have gone the wrong way altogether. But then Sarge found him. Now he knew exactly which road he was on.
Sarge stood in front of them, his shell projecting a video onto the flaky plaster of the wall behind him – the paused, blurred image of a tall red-headed man. ‘This is our next target.’ Mal felt a surge of energy, motivated by the determination in Sarge’s expression as he spoke. ‘We need to get this right because we’re dealing with a right tricky bastard here. We can’t let him get away with his crimes.’
Bizzy nodded as he listened.
‘Our suspect is controlling and manipulative. He clearly chose this woman because she was vulnerable, as domestic violence perpetrators often do. He would have portrayed himself as charming and sensitive but then gone on to gaslight and gradually dominate his victim until she was totally under his power. We believe he killed her pet cat as a punishment for trying to contact her mother. This is classic coercive control.’
Mal marvelled at Sarge’s insight into both the perpetrator and the victim. There was so much to learn from his mentor. He could tell Bizzy was awestruck too. How often had he taken the piss out of Mal for hero-worshipping Sarge, and yet there he was, lapping up every word.
‘This video will give you an understanding of what we’re dealing with.’ Sarge turned to the projected image. The footage played out as the three men watched in silence. Mal tried to remain expressionless.
When it ended, Sarge continued. ‘This guy thinks he’s got away with it. We know differently, as do the vigilantes, and we need to get to him before they do.’ Sarge’s jaw tightened and Mal could hear his teeth gritting together. ‘We can’t let him walk away from this.’
Sarge stood silently for a moment, his shoulders dropped, head down. Mal and Bizzy shuffled uncomfortably until he looked up at them and said slowly, ‘We are going to get this’ – he lifted his fingers and made an O between finger and thumb to emphasise his last two words – ‘spot on.’
It was the thing that Mal most admired in his boss, the desire to get everything just right. Sarge was like an artist almost, trying to replicate perfectly the crime that had been committed so that he could see as the criminal had seen, delve into their psychology to get to the heart of the matter.
‘Bizzy, I want you to go over that report again to see anything that we might have missed. Mal, we’re going to need more evidence.’
‘Yes, Sarge,’ they chimed together.
Sarge’s shell pinged and he glanced at it briefly before looking back at them with a broad grin. ‘We’ve located him, boys!’
The two men followed Sarge out of the office, ready to see real justice done.