‘Oh c’mon, there’s more to it than that,’ Stevie said. ‘What about the bust we did where that rock-spider dressed himself in drag to try and catch the kid? You didn’t lose it with him. Something’s wrong, I know you, remember? You’re going to have to give me some kind of explanation for all this if you don’t want me taking this further.’
Tash looked away. ‘It’s the job, I told you that; these animals who use and abuse for their own sick pleasure, never caring about the consequences to the kid, the physical trauma, the lifetime of emotional pain—’
‘If it’s getting to you that much, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it any more, maybe you should apply to a different unit.’
Tash screwed her eyes tight for a moment. ‘You going to tell Dolly, have me put in for a transfer?’
‘I won’t if you give can me a more credible explanation for your behaviour. And if you can’t talk to me then I think you need to speak to one of the counsellors about this.’
Tash pushed away from the wall and dragged the chair from the table with a nerve-grating scrape. Taking her change in position as a begrudging sign of truce, Stevie pulled up a chair and sat down too.
Tash inspected her chewed nails. ‘Robert Mason reminded me of someone I used to know, that’s all,’ she mumbled.
‘Who?’ Stevie and Tash had been friends since they were squad mates at the police academy and knew a lot of the same people.
‘No one you know. Someone from a long time ago, one of Terry’s teachers, young, cocky and good looking in a creepy kind of way. I was only a kid, but I remember thinking when I first met him that he had gravy eyes.’ She finally looked up. ‘Robert Mason has gravy eyes.’
Stevie sighed. Terry was Tash’s brother—her disabled brother—who had been in her care since their parents had been killed several years ago in a car accident. Gravy eyes—what the hell was that supposed to mean? Was that really the trigger that had set her off?
‘Can’t say I noticed his eyes,’ she said. ‘And neither had you when you decided to pull that stupid toy gun on him. But go on.’
Tash took a deep breath. ‘Terry had finally been accepted into our local high. It was a huge achievement, he’d spent most of his life at a special school and we were all so excited for him. I was still at primary school, but I remember how proud he was. And he settled in well, most of the kids were really nice to him. Then the maths teacher said he was showing potential, and offered to give Terry tuition without charge, said with some extra coaching, he might even be able to reach TEE standard.’
Stevie knew exactly where this was going.
‘Every week Mum dropped him off for his tutoring and every week his behaviour got worse. He started getting into trouble at school, knocked a kid’s tooth out in the playground, started wetting his bed, having tantrums. In the end we had to send him back to the special school. The sexual abuse from the maths teacher was revealed during a counselling session.’
‘Was he prosecuted?’
‘Oh yeah, he got five years. But Terry still gets violent mood swings, terrible nightmares—Mum blamed herself. He was a gorgeous placid kid.’
‘And you blamed yourself too I bet.’
‘As a kid I did, yeah, even though I was younger than him, I always saw myself as his protector.’
Stevie shook her head. And you still do blame yourself don’t you? You’ve picked up your mother’s mantle.
‘Look,’ Tash said. ‘Don’t tell anyone about this, will you? If anyone else in the unit got to hear about this I’d be under a microscope. It would colour everything I did.’
Maybe it already has, Stevie thought as she searched her friend’s face. If this story had been revealed during the interviews and psychological screening that went with the job application, she would never have been accepted into Sex Crimes, Cyber Predator Unit. Christ, it was a serious breach just to withold that sort of information.
Just then the door swung open and a uniformed officer entered. He did a double take when he saw them sitting in what he’d assumed to be a vacant interview room.
With a slight curl of his lip he said, ‘Oh, sorry ladies, didn’t mean to disturb the mothers’ meeting.’
Stevie rolled her eyes at him then said to Tash, ‘Yeah, all this gossip’s made me thirsty, how about a cuppa, Tash?’
As they slipped past the officer Tash nudged Stevie in the ribs. ‘You swear?’ she mouthed.
2
EXCERPT FROM CHAT ROOM TRANSCRIPT 110207
HARUM SCARUM: U goin 2 park 2 meet boy?
BETTYBO: yup. 2morow
HARUM SCARUM: omg plz dont
BETTYBO: Ynot?
HARUM SCARUM: sme
In another park not too far away, Bianca Webster ran. She felt light and fluttery, as if her heart wanted to fly from her mouth, as if her thongs had turned into giant, bouncy springs.
‘Yay!’ she screamed at the top of her lungs as she raced across the grass, barely feeling the weight of the laptop bag as it thumped upon her back. I’m Katy Enigma; my computer bag has become my jet-propelled backpack. Any minute now I will press the button and bounce from my springs into the air and stay there, swooping high and low over the park like a hawk, hunting out mystery and adventure, saving lives and righting wrongs.
But as she rounded the grassy corner she was forced to skid to a sudden halt. The springs buckled and crumbled to rust; the breath flew from her body.
She wasn’t alone.
Ahead of her, two boys played on a seesaw. Bianca dropped to her knees and crept behind a bush to watch them. Her nose began to run but she didn’t dare sniff. She turned her head and wiped it on her bare arm.
For a moment the boys seemed perfectly balanced, but then the heavier boy bounced on his end, making it sink. He was about nine, Bianca guessed, and he was really quite fat. The other one scowled, swearing, because he’d been stranded in the air. She saw it coming: all of a sudden the fat kid rolled off the seat and his mate came crashing down, landing hard on his bum. The fat kid laughed and the skinny kid began to blub, then took off with the fat kid chasing after him yelling, ‘Slow down, slow down, arsehole!
Bianca didn’t mind being invisible to the boys; most boys were dickheads, anyway, except for Daniel of course. But even though she didn’t care about the boys, she found she’d lost that light airy feeling from before. Maybe it was a sign; maybe she shouldn’t be doing this. Maybe she should turn around and go home. It felt as if she was the one sitting on the seesaw now.
Daniel said it was good to take risks because taking risks makes us feel alive, like she felt when she was running down the hill playing at being Katy Enigma. Katy might be pretend, but Daniel was real and cool and mega smart. More than anything else, Bianca wanted to be cool and smart like Daniel. She also wanted to show that snobby Zoë Carmichael that she could get a boyfriend who was clever and popular too, that she didn’t need any of those teasing dickheads from school.
There wasn’t anyone on the swings. The heat shimmered from the ground and made the chains wiggle like spaghetti. She should have worn shorts. Her heavy jeans rubbed as she walked, making her legs feel hot and sore.
There wasn’t anyone else in the park at all now. She was early. She looked around and identified the meeting spot, a closed up ice cream kiosk. Too bad it was closed, she thought, it would’ve been good to have an ice cream while she waited.