through his telescope again.
“Unbelievable! Moron!” he screams, shaking his head.
He turns back to me, settling his haunch on the corner of the desk. A print behind his head is a famous depiction of the Bow Street Runners, London’s renowned early police force.
“Great things are expected of you, DC Barba.”
“With all due respect, sir, I am not gun-shy. I am fitter than ever. I can run a mile in four and a half minutes. I’m a better shot than anyone at the DPG. My high-speed defensive driving skills are excellent. I am the same officer as before—”
“Yes, yes, you’re very capable I’m sure, but the decision has been made. It’s out of my hands. You’ll report to the Police Recruitment Center at Hendon on Monday morning.”
He opens his office door and waits for me to leave. “You’re still a very important member of the team, Alisha. We’re glad to have you back.”
Words have dried up. I know I should argue with him or slam my fist on his desk and demand a review. Instead, I meekly walk out the door. It closes behind me.
Outside, I wander along Victoria Street. I wonder if the Chief Superintendent is watching me. I’m tempted to look up toward his window and flip him the bird. Isn’t that what the Americans call it?
Of course, I don’t. I’m too polite, you see. That’s my problem. I don’t intimidate. I don’t bully. I don’t talk in sporting cliches or slap backs or have a wobbly bit between my legs. Unfortunately, it’s not as though I have outstanding feminine wiles to fall back on such as a killer cleavage or a backside like J-Lo. The only qualities I bring to the table are my gender and ethnic credibility. The Metropolitan Police want nothing else from me.
I am twenty-nine years old and I still think I’m capable of something remarkable in my life. I am different, unique, beyond compare. I don’t have Cate’s luminous beauty or infinite sadness, or her musical laugh or the ability to make all men feel like warriors. I have wisdom, determination and steel.
At sixteen I wanted to win Olympic gold. Now I want to make a difference. Maybe falling in love will be my remarkable deed. I will explore the heart of another human being. Surely that is challenge enough. Cate always thought so.
When I need to think I run. When I need to forget I run. It can clear my thoughts completely or focus them like a magnifying glass that dwarfs the world outside the lens. When I run the way I know I can, it all happens in the air, the pure air, floating above the ground, levitating the way great runners imagine themselves in their dreams.
The doctors said I might never walk again. I confounded predictions. I like that idea. I don’t like doing things that are predictable. I don’t want to do what people expect.
I began with baby steps. Crawl before you can walk, Simon my physiotherapist said. Walk before you can run. He and I conducted an ongoing skirmish. He cajoled me and I cursed him. He twisted my body and I threatened to break his arm. He said I was a crybaby and I called him a bully.
“Rise up on your toes.”
“I’m trying.”
“Hold on to my arm. Close your eyes. Can you feel the stretch in your calf?”
“I can feel it in my eyeballs.”
After months in traction and more time in a wheelchair, I had trouble telling where my legs stopped and the ground began. I bumped into walls and stumbled on pavements. Every set of stairs was another Everest. My living room was an obstacle course.
I gave myself little challenges, forcing myself out on the street every morning. Five minutes became ten minutes, became twenty minutes. After every operation it was the same. I pushed myself through winter and spring and a long hot summer when the air was clogged with exhaust fumes and heat rose from every brick and slab.
I have explored every corner of the East End, which is like a huge, deafening factory with a million moving parts. I have lived in other places in London and never even made eye contact with neighbors. Now I have Mr. Mordecai next door, who mows my postage-stamp-size lawn, and Mrs. Goldie across the road picks up my dry cleaning.
There is a jangling, squabbling urgency to life in the East End. Everyone is on the make—haggling, complaining, gesticulating and slapping their foreheads. These are the “people of the abyss” according to Jack London. That was a century ago. Much has changed. The rest remains the same.
For nearly an hour I keep running, following the Thames past Westminster, Vauxhall and the old Battersea Power Station. I recognize where I am—the back streets of Fulham. My old boss lives near here, in Rainville Road: Detective Inspector Vincent Ruiz, retired. We talk on the phone every day or so. He asks me the same two questions: are you okay, and do you need anything. My answers are always: yes, I’m okay; and no, I don’t need anything.
Even from a distance I recognize him. He is sitting in a folding chair by the river, with a fishing rod in one hand and a book on his lap.
“What are you doing, sir?”
“I’m fishing.”
“You can’t really expect to catch anything.”
“No.”
“So why bother?”
He sighs and puts on his ah-grasshopper-you-have-much-to-learn voice.
“Fishing isn’t always about catching fish, Alisha. It isn’t even about the expectation of catching fish. It is about endurance, patience and most importantly”—he raises a can of draft—“it is about drinking beer.”
Sir has put on weight since he retired—too many pastries over coffee and the
Reeling in his line, he folds up his chair.
“You look like you’ve just run a marathon.”
“Not quite that far.”
I help him carry his gear across the road and into a large terrace house, with lead-light windows above empty flower boxes. He fills the kettle and moves a bundle of typed pages from the kitchen table.
“So what have you been doing with yourself, sir?”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me sir.”
“What should I call you?”
“Vincent.”
“How about DI?”
“I’m not a detective inspector anymore.”
“It could be like a nickname.”
He shrugs. “You’re getting cold. I’ll get you a sweater.”
I hear him rummaging upstairs and he comes down with a cardigan that smells of lavender and mothballs. “My mother’s,” he says apologetically.
I have met Mrs. Ruiz just the once. She was like something out of a European fairy tale—an old woman with missing teeth, wearing a shawl, rings and chunky jewelry.
“How is she?”
“Mad as a meat ax. She keeps accusing the staff at the hostel of giving her enemas. Now
Ruiz laughs out loud, which is a nice sound. He’s normally one of the most taciturn of men, with a permanent scowl and a generally low opinion of the human race, but that has never put me off. Beneath his gruff exterior I know there
I spy an old-fashioned typewriter in the corner.
“Are you writing, DI?”
“No.” He answers too abruptly.
“You’re writing a book.”
“Don’t be daft.”
I try not to smile but I know my lips are turning up. He’s going to get cross now. He hates people laughing at
