Frankie was discharged from the police station just before six o’clock. It had been a long afternoon, tearful, frustrating and, above all, puzzling. The traffic warden had carried out an heroic attempt to arrest her after she’d thrown the laptop through the window but she had resisted. She would have been able to get into the car and drive away were it not for the traffic warden spotting the rare sight of two constables out on patrol on the high street.
Within half an hour, Frankie was in the back of a police van heading down to the station. The last thing she saw as she looked out of the window was the self-satisfied traffic warden fixing a ticket to her car.
The desk sergeant looked familiar. ‘You’ll be wanting to book a room here,’ said Sergeant Chescoe.
Frankie gave him a weak grin. ‘Suppose there’s no point in me saying this is not my fault?’
‘You’re right.’ Chescoe turned to his computer screen. ‘Now stand on that white line while PC Crocker and I get you booked in.’
PC Crocker, the taller of the two constables who’d arrested her, who to Frankie’s eyes looked like an effeminate version of Stephen Merchant, stepped up to the counter and gave details of the time and nature of the offence.
Frankie practised her breathing. In … One, two, three, four. And out. It seemed to help. She managed to stay silent, only speaking when requested to answer the sergeant’s questions.
‘You’re lucky, Mrs Baxter. Your friend DS Webb is on this afternoon. I’m afraid we’ve got to put you in a cell for a while until he’s free to interview you. After that, it should all be pretty straightforward – providing you behave.’ He added particular weight to the last three words.
PC Crocker and his unnamed companion led her down a blue and cream corridor of heavy doors. It was the sort of place she’d seen on television a hundred times. Pulling open the door of cell number four, PC Crocker asked her to remove her belt and shoes. She perched on a thin ledge under the window, which she assumed served as a bed. There was a rancid smell in the room; once PC Crocker closed the door, Frankie saw the open-plan toilet arrangements in one corner.
She’d started the day ready to begin a brand-new job and now, five hours later, she was trying to calm herself in a room smelling of shit. She pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them close.
There had been many times when she’d taken what life had given her, so why hadn’t she been able to do that today? Why hadn’t she been able to deal with it reasonably? She knew why: she needed to be heard.
There had been four hours of discussion in that office about a job she knew was hers, a job that two people she’d never met insisted didn’t exist. She was pretty sure they had doubted her sanity by the end of the morning. As soon as she walked out of the door, they would forget all about her.
She couldn’t allow that. The squeaky wheel got the grease; to get the answers, she had to create a noise. That was just what she was doing when the laptop sailed through the office window – although that might prove a problem with Shannon or Henry when they started looking for the computer to do their homework.
She’d lost track of the time when the cell door cranked open and the ferret face of Detective Sergeant Webb appeared round the door. ‘Well, well, well. Look who it is.’ Frankie fought hard not to tell the sergeant that he should have opened the door with, ‘Hello, hello, hello.’ He didn’t seem in the mood for jokes. ‘Follow me, Baxter.’
She was pretty sure it was the same interview room in which she’d spent time when she’d met Detective Sergeant Webb before. It was heartening to see the familiar face of PC Ashley waiting at the interview table. He nodded when she entered the room but stayed silent.
The sergeant went through the routine with the recording device and then looked her in the eye. ‘You’re not doing badly, are you, love? Session in here as a possible suspect in a suspicious death enquiry and now damage to council property. What’s going on?’
Frankie took a deep breath. Was it worth explaining? The tone of his voice suggested he would be impervious to any form of excuse, but she knew she couldn’t give up. ‘Something odd is going on, sergeant, and it all seemed to come to a head this morning.’
‘You’d better start explaining to me before we get the charge sheet out.’
Frankie bit back her response. Her stomach tightened and she exhaled slowly while trying to find the right words. She told him about the job application, the emails, the online training and how she’d turned up at the office this morning, as requested, and found it was all a lie or some kind of malicious trick.
‘I’m no expert on Internet fraud,’ said Sergeant Webb, ‘but it all sounds a bit extravagant just to get you to turn up for a job that’s not there. A bit of a prank, if you ask me.’
‘A prank?’ The word hit Frankie in the face as if he’d slapped her. ‘Somebody’s fucked my life up, sergeant. That’s how much of a prank it is! Somebody’s built up my hopes that for once I could achieve something, that for once I wouldn’t be scrabbling around in the bottom of my purse for loose change to buy something for supper. Just for once, I wouldn’t be having to fill out endless benefit forms to supplement what they call a flexible hours contract. Somebody has taken my miserable fucking life and hung it out to dry.’
Webb relaxed his gaze and looked down at the table for a moment.
‘And if you could feel one bit as stupid as I do,’ she went on, ‘then there’s a slim fucking chance you’d understand.’
PC Ashley squirmed in his seat.
Webb looked at her. ‘Right, you can make a formal request for an investigation. I have to inform you that there is very little actual evidence. What we are here to sort out is the damage to the childcare office while you were doing your impersonation of Fatima Whitbread with a laptop. Leave it with me. Detective Sergeant Webb leaving the room.’
A soon as the door closed, PC Ashley leant across the desk and pushed a button on the tape recorder. ‘Just pausing the recording for a moment.’ He smiled at her. ‘Nothing you say is being recorded now, okay?’
Frankie looked a little bewildered but nodded her head.
He moved round to Frankie’s side of the table and sat next to her. ‘I think someone has targeted you for this. Someone wanted this to happen.’
Ha! The incisive police mind at work, Frankie thought. She remained silent, her heart pumping as she realised what he was suggesting.
‘Have you any idea who it might be?’
The answer was straightforward. ‘No.’
‘None at all? You did tell me about the circumstances that caused you to leave your last job. The guy who propositioned you. Wouldn’t be the type to want to get his own back, would he?’
‘He did get his own back. I got sacked. I don’t believe this. I keep myself to myself. Me and the kids. I’ve had enough shit in my life. Once Henry’s dad pissed off, I made a promise that it was me and the three of them together. Everything I do, I do for them.’ She snatched a pause for breath. ‘I’ve no idea why somebody would go to such lengths to set me up. My friend Cora sorted this job. Why would somebody want to make me jobless? They’ve made me a fool of me. I owe the bank all the money we spent over Christmas, and now I’m sitting in a police station facing charges of criminal damage. And you think that someone somewhere is getting a kick out of this?’
‘I don’t know.’ PC Ashley stared at her. ‘But with your permission, I want to try to find out. I can’t do anything today – the sarge will be back in a minute – but I could call round.’
Frankie was having trouble taking everything in. ‘If you do, could you not wear uniform? I’m sure the neighbours are sick of police turning up at my door.’
PC Ashley laughed and moved round to the other side of the table as the door opened. Sergeant Webb came in. ‘Right, we’ve had a call from a Mr Pravasana who is the guy running the place where you went bananas in this morning. I’m not sure why, but it looks like you struck gold. If you agree to meet the costs of the window replacement, they’ll agree not to press charges. If I were you I’d grab it, otherwise, you’re going to have a criminal record.’
Walking back up the street to the car, Frankie pondered the events of the afternoon. She’d no idea where she was going to find a couple of hundred pounds to pay for the window. The only positive thing was a brief flicker of hope from PC Ashley. If she could find out a bit more about what was going on, this might all make a strange kind of sense.
She turned onto the bottom end of the high street and saw the lights on in Snifters wine bar. A few people were sitting at tables in the window. Cora had asked to meet her there that evening for a drink after work. Would she turn up? There was no sign of her at first glance.
Frankie found a table near the back of the room and ordered a bottle of the cheapest house wine, the sort that would make Cora splutter if she tasted it. She thought of what Cora would say when she found out what had happened. She’d had no response to the phone message she’d left, but that wasn’t unusual. Surely she was nothing to do with this? She’d given them a car. She’d shown them endless kindness. And yet something was wrong. Why had she said she was the boss, when nobody at the office knew who she was? And why did she never answer the phone? It was what Sherlock Holmes might call a two-glass problem.
As Frankie downed her second glass of wine, things became clearer. Cora had an enemy. Someone had realised what she was up to and resolved to make her plan fail. They’d interfered in the job allocation process and wiped Frankie’s records from the scene.
Another glass, and that didn’t make any sense. Cora had waited outside this morning to wish her good luck. Cora must have thought she was going into a job. But then nobody at the childcare office had heard of Cora. Had she lost her job? Had she been too afraid or embarrassed to tell Frankie about it? Was she lingering there assuming Frankie would be fine, though she herself no longer had a job?
More wine didn’t make her thoughts clearer, but Frankie knew that somehow this involved Cora. She glanced at her watch. It was coming up to eight o’clock. Cora hadn’t shown up. Frankie suspected she wasn’t going to and, at this moment in time, Frankie had no way of getting hold of her. And she should be at home with the kids.
She emptied the last splash out of the bottle and, beaming at the chunky barman, she paid the bill. As she stumbled out onto the pavement, Frankie realised she was more than a little tipsy. It was quite a walk home, especially in this condition, and the car was just up the street. Should she chance it? It was a straight road home; with the windows down to get some fresh air and music playing to keep her alert, it would all be fine. Wouldn’t it?
She held her breath and set off, walking slowly even though her legs were telling her otherwise. She swayed and stumbled forward with a feeling that, no matter how many steps she took, she was no closer to the car.
All at once she found herself standing outside the childcare office. They’d boarded the window up and there was no sign of her car.