As she sat behind the traffic men rustling in their yellow fluorescent jackets, she began to feel the familiar sensation of growing despondency as the tension left her and the adrenaline subsided. Very shortly she would have to walk away from the job and face up to the bleak reality of her personal life for another depressing evening.
‘Thanks, fellers!’ she called as the car dropped her in the station yard.
The driver waved a hand nonchalantly in her direction, but his partner turned to look at her as the Rover pulled away. He eyed her curiously and said something to the driver which Fry couldn’t make out. She dismissed it from her mind as not 1
worth bothering about. She had seen female colleagues rushing 1 like lemmings to destroy their own careers in the force because they had let totally petty incidents get out of proportion and fester in their minds.
First she walked up to the CID room. All the lights were on, and one or two of the computer screens were flickering with screen savers that looked like all the stars of the galaxy rushing past the flight deck of the Starship Enterprise. But the place was devoid of human life, not even a DC on night duty. Fry sat at her desk and wrote up her notes of the interview with Harry Dickinson. She knew that Tailby would be demanding them first thing, before the morning briefing, and she wanted them
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to be there for him before he had to ask. It would mean another small credit to her name — and it would also mean she would be available immediately for allocation to an enquiry team. The report didn’t take her long. She was a competent typist,
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and her note-taking was accurate and legible. She hesitated for only a moment when she reached the end of the interview, but decided to include the final comment from Harrv Dickinson for the sake of completeness. As she wrote that Dickinson had told
DCI Tailbv to ‘bugger off. she was surprised to find herself
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Mulling. She quickly changed the expression to a grimace, then a frown, looking round the empty office to be sure that no one wis watching her. It wasn’t her stvle to laugh at senior officers — she had never joined in the irreverent banter and rude jokes of the canteen, either here or at West Midlands. She couldn’t understand what there was about Harry Dickinson’s comment that could have made her smile.
She printed out two copies of her notes and dropped one into the tray on DI Hitchens’s desk. Then she walked up to the incident room, where a DS and a computer operator were huddled together over a telephone and a screen full of data. They both ignored her as she cast around for the action file to insert
O
the second copy of her report. She knew that, in the morning, when the regular day shift came on, the room would be buzzing with activity. From what she had seen of Tailby, she was sure he would be fully up to date and reminded of the details of the day by the time everyone arrived for briefing.
Then, finally, there wras nothing left for her to do. She shut the incident room door quietly and walked back down through the almost empty building to the car park.
After she had deactivated the alarm on her black Peugeot, she stood for a moment, looking at the back wall of the police station. There was nothing at all to see, but for a few lighted windows, where shadowy outlines could be made out occasionally as officers went about their business. Probably
some of them were resentful about being on dutv when they
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would rather be at home with their iamilies or out at the pub or whatever else police officers did in their free time. Fry guessed that very few of them would resent having to leave the station and go home. She started the Peugeot and drove too quickly out of the yard.
In Edendale, as in any other small town, the evening often
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meant almost deserted streets for long periods, interrupted by
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straggling groups of young people heading for the pubs between eight and nine o’clock, and the same groups, stumbling now.
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returning home at half past eleven or looking for buses and taxis to take them on to night clubs or parties.
Many of the youngsters who littered the streets at night were not only the worse for drink, but were also plainly underage. Diane Fry knew enough to turn a blind eye when she passed them. Fvery police officer would do so, unless some other offence was being committed — an assault, a breach of the peace, abusive language or indecent exposure. Underage drinking could only be tackled in the pubs themselves, and there were always more urgent things to do, always other priorities.
Today was Monday, and even the young people were thin on the ground as Fry drove down Greaves Road towards the town centre. She circled the roundabout at the end of the pedestrianized shopping area and automatically looked to her right down Clappergate. There were lights on in the windows of Boots the Chemists and McDonald’s, where three youths slouched against the black cast-iron street furniture, eating Chicken McNuggets
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and large fries prior to adding their cartons to the debris already littering the paving stones.
Most of the shops were shrouded in darkness, abandoning the town to the pubs and restaurants. Fry had not yet got used to the mixture of shops in Edendale. By day, there was a small baker’s shop in Clappergate with wicker baskets and an ancient delivery boy’s bicycle strung with onions and a painted milk churn, all standing outside on the pavement. A few doors down was a New Age shop rich with the smell of aromatherapy oils and scented candles and the glint of crystals. In between them lay SpecSavers and the dry cleaners and a branch of the Derbyshire Building Society.
Further along, on Hulley Road, a couple in their thirties stood looking into the darkened window of one of the estate agents
