“Arthur!” Tommy’s mother looked alarmed.
“What? Oh, don’t worry.” He got up and tousled Tommy’s hair. “I’m off for a shave, then. You’ll have to do that yourself one day, you know,” he said, rubbing his dark stubble against Tommy’s cheek.
Tommy pulled away. “I know,” he said. “Can I go now? I’ve finished my breakfast.”
“We’ll all go,” said his mother. And they went up to their rooms. Tommy took a handkerchief from his little suitcase and put it in his pocket, because he really was starting to sniffle a bit now, made sure he had his badge and the money Uncle Arthur had given him, then went back into the corridor. Uncle Arthur was standing there, waiting and whistling, freshly shaven, hair still sticking up. For a moment, Tommy felt a shiver of fear ripple up his spine. Had Uncle Arthur realized that someone had been in his room and rummaged through his stuff, found the money and the gun?
Uncle Arthur grinned. “Women,” he said, gesturing with his thumb toward Tommy’s mother’s door. “One day you’ll know all about them.”
“Sure. One day I’ll know everything,” muttered Tommy. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket to blow his nose, and it snagged on the plastic wallet, sending his badge flying to the floor.
“What’s this, then?” said Uncle Arthur, bending down to pick it up.
“Give me it back!” said Tommy, panicking, reaching out for the wallet.
But Uncle Arthur raised his arm high, out of Tommy’s reach. “I said, what have we got here?”
“It’s nothing,” Tommy said. “It’s mine. Give it to me.”
“Mind your manners.”
“Please.”
Uncle Arthur opened the wallet, looked at the badge, and looked at Tommy. “A police badge,” he said. “Like father, like son, eh? Is that it?”
“I told you it was mine,” Tommy said, desperately snatching. “You leave it alone.”
But Uncle Arthur had pulled the badge out of its transparent-plastic covering. “It’s not real, you know,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” Tommy said. “Give us it back.”
“It’s made of plastic,” said Uncle Arthur. “Where did you get it?”
“I found it. On the beach. Give it to me.”
“I told you, it’s just plastic,” said Uncle Arthur. And to prove his point, he dropped the badge on the floor and stepped on it. The badge splintered under his foot. “See?”
At that moment, Tommy’s mother came out of her room, ready to go. “What’s happening?” she said, seeing Tommy practically in tears.
“Nothing,” said Uncle Arthur, stepping toward the stairs. He gave Tommy a warning look. “Is there, lad? Let’s go, love. Our carriage awaits.” He laughed.
Tommy’s mother gave a nervous giggle, then bent and pecked Tommy on the cheek. He felt her soft hair touch his face and smelled her perfume. It made him feel dizzy. He held back his tears. “You’ll be all right, son?” She hadn’t seen the splintered badge, and he didn’t want her to. It might bring back too many painful memories for her.
He nodded. “You go,” he said. “Have a good time.”
“See you later.” His mother gave a little wave and tripped down the stairs after Uncle Arthur. Tommy looked down at the floor. The badge was in four pieces on the lino. He bent and carefully picked them up. Maybe he could mend it, stick it together somehow, but it would never be the same. This was a bad sign. With tears in his eyes, he put the pieces back in the plastic wallet, returned it to his pocket, and followed his mother and Uncle Arthur outside to make sure they got on the tram before he went to do what he had to do.
“YOU READY YET, Tommy?”
“Just a minute, Phil,” Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Burford shouted over his shoulder at DI Craven. He was walking on the beach – the hard, wet sand where the waves licked in and almost washed over his shoes – and DI Craven, his designated driver, was waiting patiently on the prom. Tommy’s stomach was churning, the way it always did before a big event, and today, 13 July, 2006, he was about to receive a Police Bravery Award.
If it had been one of his men, he would have called it folly, not bravery. He had thrown himself at a man holding a hostage at gunpoint, convinced in his bones, in his every instinct, that he could disarm the man before he hurt the hostage. He had succeeded, receiving for his troubles only a flesh wound on his shoulder and a ringing in his ears that lasted three days. And the bravery award. At his rank, he shouldn’t even have been at the hostage-taking scene – he should have been in a cubicle, catching up on paperwork or giving orders over the police radio – but paperwork had always bored him, and he sought out excitement whenever he had the chance. Now he walked with the salt spray blowing through his hair, trying to control his churning bowels just because he had to stand up in front of a crowd and say a few words.
Tommy did what he usually did on such occasions and took the old plastic wallet out of his pocket as he stood and faced the gray waves. The wallet was cracked and faded with time, and there was a tear reaching almost halfway up the central crease. Inside, behind the transparent cover, was a police badge made out of plastic. It had been broken once and was stuck together with glue and Sellotape. Most of the silver had worn off over the years, and it was now black in places. The crown and cross had broken off the top, but the words were still clearly visible in the central circle: METROPOLITAN POLICE curved around ER. Elizabeth Regina. “Our queen,” as his father had once said so proudly.
In the opposite side of the wallet was a yellowed newspaper clipping from July 1965, forty-one years ago. It flapped in the breeze, and Tommy made sure he held on to it tightly as he read the familiar words:
Schoolboy Foils Robbers
A thirteen-year-old schoolboy’s sense of honor and duty led to the arrest of Arthur Leslie Marsden in the murder of PC Brian Burford during the course of a payroll robbery last August. Five other men and one woman were also arrested and charged in the swoop, based on evidence and information given by the boy at a Blackpool police station. Also arrested were Madeleine Burford, widow of the deceased constable, named as Marsden’s lover and source of inside information; Len Fraser, driver of the getaway car; John Jarrow…
Tommy knew it by heart, all the names, all the details. He also remembered the day he had walked into the police station, showed his badge to the officer at the front desk, and told him all about the contents of Uncle Arthur’s holdall. It had taken a while, a bit of explaining, but in the end the desk sergeant had let him in, and the plainclothes detectives had shown a great deal of interest in what he had to say. They accompanied him to the boardinghouse and found the holdall in its hiding place. After that, they soon established that the gun was the same one used to shoot his father. The gang had been lying low, waiting for the heat to die down before daring to use any large quantities of the money – a year, they had agreed – and they had been too stupid to get rid of the gun. The only fingerprints on it were Uncle Arthur’s, and the five hundred pounds it was resting on was just a little spending money to be going on with.
The one thing the newspaper article didn’t report was that the “boy” was Tommy Burford, only son of Brian and Madeleine Burford. That came out later, of course, at the trial, but at the time, the authorities had done everything within their power to keep his name out of it. Every time he read the story over again, Tommy’s heart broke just a little more. Throwing himself at gunmen, tackling gangs armed with hammers and chains, and challenging rich and powerful criminals never came close to making the pain go away; it took the edge off for only a short while, until the adrenaline wore off.