‘Living the dream, Sean, living the fucking dream.’
Sean didn’t reply. He wanted to say it was all right. It’s what he’d signed up for, worked hard for, harder than some when it came to it. He knew he was lucky to have Gav as a partner. There were plenty of officers who took the piss, still made the same jokes they did when he was a Police Community Support Officer, but Gav was all right: a time-served constable with a reputation for being fair, but firm. Sean just wished he didn’t moan so much. It was taking the shine off.
Sean shifted his feet on the mound of thrown-away crap as Gav swung left around Market Place. They parked the car and watched and waited for the next call. This town didn’t sleep and Sean wondered where people found the money. After half an hour a job came in around the corner, two men fighting outside the Ace Bonanza Amusement Arcade. When they arrived, neither assailant wanted to press charges.
‘No worries, he’s my best mate!’ The apparent victim was wiping blood from his nose.
The two men locked together in a hug, but Sean thought they were just as likely to shift back to something uglier.
‘If you say so,’ Gav shrugged. Sean was reaching for a notebook, but Gav shook his head. ‘Let it go, son. Less paperwork.’
A pub called in a handbag theft, so they dropped in to take statements, shouting to be heard above the karaoke. Then they were back in the car, trying not to collide with a woman weaving drunkenly across the road. She turned and flicked two fingers at them, before staggering on to the opposite pavement.
By 11 p.m. they were passing the railway station again. A British Transport Police van was parked up on the forecourt. Sean thought back to the first case he’d covered as a PCSO, and the vulnerable women who’d been befriended on the station platforms and ended up on the game. He wondered what their colleagues in the Transport Police were up to tonight. He hoped for their sake it was nothing more than fare dodgers.
‘What’s the difference between South Yorkshire Police and the BTP?’ Gav said.
Sean shrugged.
‘BTP do longer shifts.’
‘That meant to be funny?’
‘That’s what they say!’ Gav laughed but Sean just shook his head.
As they drove, they looked out for Saleem’s associate and argued back and forth over what the two lads were doing, who was dealing and who was buying. The sky began to lighten. Sean opened the car window to let the clean, damp morning air drive out the stale smell. A blackbird sang a greeting from the skinny tree outside the law courts as Gav pulled into the police yard. It was 6.25 a.m. and their shift was almost over.
‘What are you up to for the next couple of days?’ Gav said as they walked down the corridor of the police station.
‘Not a lot.’ Sean did have a plan for his days off, but he wasn’t ready to share it with Gav. ‘You?’
‘I’ve got a box set to catch up on and the usual domestic drudgery of DIY and sorting out the jungle we laughingly call a garden. Nothing special.’
Gav said goodbye and went off in the direction of the custody suite. Sean finished his paperwork and was handing in his radio, when Gav reappeared.
‘They’ve let him go.’
‘Saleem Asaf?’
‘Aye, nothing on him. Little bastard.’
‘What a waste of time,’ Sean said.
‘There’s something else,’ Gav said. ‘He’s filed an official complaint.’
‘Against me?’
‘That’s right, son. You might be getting a call from Professional Standards.’
‘Should I be worried?’
‘Not necessarily.’
Back in his nan’s kitchen, Sean sank his face into a cup of strong tea. It was eight o’clock in the morning and he needed to sleep.
‘Busy night?’ Maureen put a plate of toast in front of him.
Sean rolled his head to one side to release a crick in his neck from wrestling with the boy.
‘You could say that.’
He chewed on the hot toast and picked up the local newspaper, trying to read the sport on the back page, but his eyes couldn’t focus. He liked to read something every day, to keep up what he’d started at night classes. It’s what his teacher had told him to do: that patient, mild-mannered man, who’d never called him thick or lazy, just gave him ways to see things differently. He put the paper down. It was exhausting sometimes. He would always be dyslexic, however good he became at finding ways around it.
A second piece of toast, and a third, filled his stomach. Sleep was overcoming him. There was something he needed to say to his nan, but it would have to wait.
‘I’d better go up,’ he pushed the plate away.
Maureen reached for the paper and opened it in the centre, hunting for her horoscope. He read the headline on the front page.
‘“Chasebridge Killer … Released?” What’s that about?’ he said ‘Have I missed something?’
‘Hang on, I’m reading my stars: it’s going to be a good week for money, but I need to be careful who I rely on and someone will bring me news about a change. What? Oh.’
Maureen looked over the headline and the short column underneath. Most of the page was taken up with a picture of a dark-haired girl in a school uniform, with a choppy fringe and a sharp chin.
‘I can’t believe they’ve let her out. Flipping nutter.’
Sean leant against the door frame, wanting so badly to go up to bed, but not moving. ‘Who’s that then?’
‘It was while you were still living at your dad’s, not long after your mam died. Here it is: Marilyn Nelson, teenage killer. She pushed a lad of sixteen off the top of the flats. Says here he’d been abused and tortured before she pushed him. Nasty.’
‘I think I remember.’ The sound of a rusty swing and a shape falling. ‘And she’s out?’
‘Says so here. Thought she could be living in Scotland or Devon. Well, that’s not very precise. Served ten years. Doesn’t seem much when his poor mother will never get him back.’
He hesitated, needing to say something to Maureen, but he couldn’t find the words. Someone will bring news about a change. Not yet. It could wait.
Upstairs, he closed the curtains and kicked off his shoes, undid his belt and let his trousers fall. He peeled his shirt off over his head and climbed into the single bed. He set an alarm on his phone and turned his back to the light that was seeping through the pattern of footballs and trophies on his curtains. In the back pocket of his trousers was a piece of paper, folded into a tight, hard square. It was details of a flat to rent in town.
He was on the edge of sleep when it came back to him. He was eleven years old and swinging on the only swing that wasn’t broken, listening to the grind and squeak of the rusty chain around the top bar. He saw something move on top of Eagle Mount Four, the block where the lift never worked. He thought it was a bird at first, then he thought it was a bundle that someone had dropped. And then he understood. It was the unmistakable shape of a person in a dark coat, a coat that billowed out like a pair of wings. The shape carried on falling and the wings didn’t open. He knew it must have landed in the square, in the middle of the four blocks that made up the Eagle Mount flats. He didn’t want to see it. He stayed on the swing until the sound of metal on metal slowed down to nothing.
Long after it happened, after his own memories were messed up with other people’s versions, he could still hear the quietness that followed, as if the four towers were holding their breath.
CHAPTER TWO
York
The telly’s on in the corner of the lounge. There’s a programme on about that spaceman. Years ago. First man on the moon. Chloe doesn’t like the look of the other girls hogging the soft seats. She doesn’t want to sit on the hard plastic chair with the wonky leg, so she stands for a while just inside the door. Nobody looks round. Eventually she goes back upstairs and lies down on her bed. There’s no need to put the light on; the orange street light floods the thin cotton curtain. She can see the pattern of a stain. It’s like the outline of an arm with a knobbly elbow. She narrows her eyes and it changes to a bird’s-eye view of a cliff edge and a beach, the ins and outs of coves marked in orangey brown. The woman’s voice on the spaceman programme is still with her.