He’d remember that night as long as he lived. The day before, he’d had that damn-awful row with his wife, Janet. The rows had been getting nasty, but this one was the worst ever. Janet didn’t know how badly things had been going for him at the station. There had been complaints about his treatment of suspects. All right, perhaps he had been a mite overzealous, but he was getting results. But then there had been those two incidents, one after the other, where one prisoner had a black eye, and the other bruised ribs, and they’d screamed ‘police brutality’. Both had been resisting arrest and were swinging punches, but Detective Chief Inspector Hepton had preferred to believe them rather than one of his own officers. Hepton had threatened to take him off CID work and put him back into uniform.
He hadn’t told any of this to Janet. All she got was his bitterness, his resentment, and his temper. He couldn’t remember how that last row started. It had built up until he swore at her and called her filthy names. Reacting angrily, she had whipped her hand across his face. He deserved it. That’s what made it so hard to take: He bloody deserved it. He should have let it go, apologized, begged her forgiveness. But he had reacted without thought, the back of his hand cracking across her mouth, splitting her lip, making it bleed. She just looked at him with contempt, face white, blood trickling, then she slowly walked out, slamming the door behind her.
Later, the phone call from her mother’s, saying she was leaving him.
That’s when he should have swallowed his pride and gone after her. Instead he preferred to wallow in self- pity and drink himself stupid on the contents of the cocktail cabinet.
And when he finally staggered into the station, unshaven, eyes red-rimmed, there was Hepton, Chief Inspector-bloody-Hepton, waiting for him, barring his way, that nagging, jarring voice scratching away at his raw nerve ends like a fingernail dragged down a blackboard.
And then things were very blurred. He recalled flinging a punch. An almighty punch which spun Hepton around, knocked him into a filing cabinet, and sent him crashing to the floor. Then the room was full of people, angry, shouting, holding him back. Someone must have taken him home because he next remembered waking in his own bed the following morning, his head split by wedges, hoping against hope that it had all been some ghastly drunken nightmare. But Janet wasn’t in bed with him. The house was empty, her clothes gone, and his fist swollen and hurting like hell.
Suspension, Disciplinary Tribunal, demotion to constable, and transfer to Denton and to Jack Frost, the cretin of the year.
“Webster. How much longer are you going to be making that bloody tea?”
Wells’s voice, calling from the lobby, dragged him back to the present. The room seemed to be in a thick mist, outlines blurred and indistinct as the kettle boiled its head off. A roar of delight from the party upstairs. God, how he could do with a drink. Just one. But they’d warned him. Be drunk on duty just one more time…
He turned off the gas ring and made the tea.
In the lobby, Frost and Wells were huddled together exchanging moans. Young Collier was at the Underwood, splashing correction fluid over a typed report as if he were painting a wall. Frost lowered his eyes guiltily as Webster handed him the mug of tea, knowing that he should have taken the detective constable with him on the Ben Cornish job. Indeed, it would have been better if he had then Webster would have been the one floundering about in the wet and nasty instead of him. But he was finding the hair shirt of Webster’s permanent scowl a mite too much to take without the odd break. He pulled the mug toward him. “Thanks, son. Looks good.”
Wells accepted his tea without comment, but Collier, looking up from his remedial work, said, “Thanks very much, Inspector… sorry, I mean Constable,” which provoked a muffled snort of suppressed laughter from the sergeant.
Webster’s face went tight. Laugh, you bastards. My time will come. He rapped on the panel, pushing the mug through as Ridley slid it open. The controller nodded his thanks, then called across to Wells: “That hit-and-run victim, Sergeant they’ve taken him to Denton General Hospital. He’s not expected to live. Oh, and they’ve found the licence plate from the car that hit him.”
“A licence plate from the car that hit him!” exclaimed Frost in mock excitement. “Now that could be a clue!” He sipped his tea. “It’s never been my luck to have a bloody licence plate left behind. I’m lucky if I find two witnesses who can agree on the colour of the car.” Then he paused, the mug quivering an inch from his lips, and whispered, “Listen!”
They listened to comparative silence. No music. No stamping.
Putting his mug down, Frost hurried over to the door that led to the canteen and pushed it open. Various voices called “Goodbye, sir… Thanks for coming, sir…” The Chief Constable and Mullett were leaving. Frost smiled to himself. The minute they left, he’d be up those stairs like a sailor with a complimentary ticket to a brothel.
Picking its moment, the phone rang. “Answer that, Collier,” Wells ordered. He wasn’t going to miss his chance with the Chief Constable again. But Collier was doing his doorman act, standing to attention, holding the main door open for the VIPs to pass through. Crawling little sod, thought Wells disgustedly.
Webster had skulked off to the office and Jack Frost had ducked out of sight as he always did when Mullett loomed into view. That left only Wells to answer the phone.
Mullett and the Chief Constable shimmered into the lobby in a haze of whisky fumes and expensive cigar smoke. The Chief was talking, Mullett was listening, nodding vigorously and murmuring, “Couldn’t agree with you more, sir,” whether he heard what the Chief was saying or not. At the door the Chief Constable paused, smiled approvingly at Collier, and said to Mullett, “You’ve got a smart man there, Superintendent.”
“Couldn’t agree with you more,” said Mullett, wondering why Sergeant Wells was looking daggers in his direction.
Wells shifted the phone to his other hand and took down the details. “I see, sir. Well, try not to worry. I’ll have a detective inspector over to you right away.”
He hung up.
Upstairs, whoops of delight. The record player started up again. Jack Frost scuttled out of his hiding place in Control and hurried across to the door. The sound billowed and beckoned as he opened it.
He never made it.
“You can forget the party, Jack,” said Wells. “I’ve got a missing teenage girl for you.”
Tuesday night shift (3)
Out to the car park and the Cortina, Frost scuffling along behind Webster, the bright lights from the canteen windows looking down on them. Absent-mindedly, Webster slid into the passenger seat and stretched out as he used to in the days when a detective constable drove him around. Frost opened the passenger door and peered in. “I think you might be sitting in my seat, son.”
With a grunt of irritation, Webster shifted over to his rightful, lowly place behind the wheel, listening sullenly to the muddled directions Frost gave him as they drove off.
It was Frost who broke the uneasy silence.
“This might come as a surprise to you, son, but you’re not exactly the flavour of the month around here.”
Webster, in no mood to accept any form of criticism, especially from a twit like Frost, stiffened. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means, son, that you’ve been behaving like a spoiled brat ever since you arrived. I know we’re not God’s gift to the demoted, but why don’t you try and meet us halfway? The odd little smile twinkling through your face fungus wouldn’t come amiss.”
“I treat people the way they treat me,” snapped Webster, slowing down to wait for the lights to change. “I’m sick of having to put up with all this “Thank you, Inspector… sorry, I mean Constable” crap.”
“Young Collier’s harmless,” said Frost.
“It’s not only Collier,” said Webster, accelerating as the lights changed, ‘it’s everyone, especially Sergeant Wells. He delights in making me look small.”
“There’s a reason,” Frost said. “Bill Wells wants to be an inspector so badly it hurts. He’s passed all the exams but the Promotion Board keeps turning him down. So when he comes across someone who was an inspector, something he’s never going to be, and who chucked it all away, well, he’s bound to feel resentful.”
