Left for Dead: A Maeve Kerrigan Novella (Maeve Kerrigan Novels) (2 page)

‘Earn their respect?’

She laughed. ‘You’ll never get that. But you might get accepted. You’re not looking to impress anyone here. Showing off how good you are is a shortcut to being unpopular. You just have to make yourself bulletproof. Don’t give them any opportunity to pick on you.’

‘Is that what you did?’

‘More or less. I also terrified them into leaving me alone. But to be honest, you seem to have that one covered. You just don’t want to get angry while you’re telling them off. You want to be in control. See the difference?’

I did.

‘The other thing I’m going to say, and don’t get offended, is that if you sleep with any members of the team I’m going to kill you.’ There was no gleam of humour in her eyes. ‘It causes trouble. Arguments. It complicates things when I’m deciding who’s crewed with who. I can’t have all-female crews on nights so you’re going to be working with the male officers.’

‘I think I can control myself around Chris Curzon.’ His beard and beer-gut helped.

‘He’s all right, Chris. He knows how to be respectful and he’s not interested in picking up women at work. That’s why you’ve been crewed with him for nights up to now. But some of the others you need to watch. Don’t believe everything they tell you and don’t be fooled into thinking they see you as anything more than a challenge.’

My face was burning but I nodded.

Her face softened. ‘I’m telling you this because I’ve been in your shoes. I’ve made all the mistakes already. Do what I tell you, Maeve, and you’ll do fine. You’re going to be good at the job, once you’ve got the experience under your belt. But the personal stuff – that’ll trip you up every time.’

‘Thank you, ma’am.’

‘Get going.’

I did as I was told, catching up with Chris in the writing room where Andy Styles and Gary Lovell were talking to him. When I walked in Chris started talking very loudly about the football and who he fancied in the League this year. I knew what that meant: they’d been talking about me while I was locked away with the inspector. I gave him a look and got pure innocence in return, but I knew I’d get the truth out of him once we were in the car, if I asked. Andy scuttled out of the room without trying any more smart remarks, and Gary sauntered after him, favouring me with a long, appreciative look as he went by. I remembered Inspector Saunders’ warnings and gave him a tight-lipped smile in return.

In the car park, Chris prowled around our patrol car, obsessively hunting for scrapes and dents. ‘Every mark, Maeve. If there’s anything that’s not recorded, we’ll get the blame.’

‘You will. I’m not allowed to drive yet, remember?’

‘When are you going to get your basic?’

It was the qualification that police officers needed to drive patrol cars and it burned me that I didn’t have it yet. ‘I’ve put in for it. Soon.’

‘Test the blues and twos,’ he said, standing back while I flicked the switches that set off the siren and made the lights spin. All around us other officers were doing the same in their cars. It reminded me of an orchestra tuning up, except that the tune they were playing was a cacophony of siren noises.

‘Seems fine,’ I said.

‘Checked the back seat?’

I nodded. I had gone over it with extreme care, making sure there was nothing there so if we arrested someone who dumped their drugs down the back of the seat we could prove they weren’t from a previous passenger.

‘Got our go bag? High vis?’

‘All in the back.’

‘Filled in the log book?’

‘Yep.’

The suspension rocked as Chris sat into the driver’s seat with a sigh of satisfaction. This was truly the high point of his day, when the shift stretched out before him, full of possibilities. ‘In that case, what are we waiting for? Let’s go.’

I waited until we were clear of the nick, driving through Brixton with Chris whistling happily to himself.

‘What were they saying in the writing room?’

‘About what?’

‘About me.’

He shook his head, still whistling.

‘They were talking about me. Come on. Spill it. I promise I won’t get cross.’

His mouth was still pursed in a whistle, but the tune had died.

‘Don’t be scared, Chris. You know I won’t tell them you told me.’

He wriggled. ‘It was nothing. They were just asking about you and your temper. I said you were always lovely.’

‘Thanks for that,’ I said drily. ‘What else?’

‘Gary wanted to know if you had a boyfriend.’

‘Did he, indeed?’ I tried to look unmoved but Chris was too good a police officer not to spot the colour in my face.

‘He was asking on Andy’s behalf, before you get too excited.’

‘Really? Ugh.’

Chris laughed. ‘I thought he wasn’t your type.’

‘No. Very much not.’

‘He’s all right. Bit of a lad. You shouldn’t take him seriously.’

‘He’s sexist, and racist, and a loudmouth. He’s been feeling around, trying to hit a nerve since I started. One of these days he’s going to get told.’

‘He fancies you.’

‘No, he doesn’t. That’s ridiculous.

Chris’s expression was avuncular. ‘He does, I’m afraid. You’ll have to let him down gently if you’re not interested.’

‘I’m not, obviously. I just want to do my job.’ I shook my head. ‘Why does everyone seem to think I joined the police to meet men?’

He was big, Chris, but he was quick too. ‘Is that what the boss said?’

‘She told me not to sleep with anyone on the rota. You can pass that on to Andy if you like.’

‘I will,’ Chris promised. He was grinning to himself, but not about me. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised. She’d know all about that.’

‘Really?’

‘She was over the side with two or three blokes when she was still a sergeant. One at a time, like. She was a repeat offender, not promiscuous. That’s why her marriage broke up. Her husband was job too – a DI in North London. You’d think he’d have known what to expect.’ He shrugged. ‘Maybe he did. It was after the third one that he lost patience and dumped her.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘Common knowledge.’ He considered it. ‘Then again, we’re talking about ten or fifteen years ago. I suppose there aren’t that many people left who’d remember it.’

‘You poor old dinosaur.’

‘The last of my kind,’ Chris said happily. He had his window down, one meaty elbow resting on the sill. In a low, rumbling voice, he started crooning to himself. He did it all the time, and it was always Elvis.

‘Brixton has its shitty bits but it’s not quite the ghetto,’ I pointed out.

‘It is as far as I’m concerned.’ He went back to singing, deceptively relaxed as he drove, but ever watchful, ready for anything.

I sat in the passenger seat and concentrated on the radio chatter as I stared out at the dark streets. I told myself I was excited, but the knot in my stomach was the truth. I was scared, all the time, of getting it wrong.

And, as the inspector had just reminded me, getting it wrong was the one thing I couldn’t afford to do.

It was a quiet shift, to begin with. We drifted around, radios chattering with call signs that were not ours. Every call we might have taken was snapped up by another, closer unit. We were out of place, looking the wrong way, surrounded by drivers who were obeying the rules of the road, up to nothing but good. The closest we got to wrongdoing was a lingering smell of cannabis on a street corner, and although Chris stomped up and down sniffing like a British bulldog he couldn’t trace it back to a source. The night was hot and still, with not a breath of wind to take the edge off the humidity.

‘Feels like a thunderstorm,’ Chris said as we parked in a side street to wait for something to happen.

‘Not forecast.’

‘What do they know? They just make it up.’

‘I think it’s a bit more complicated than that,’ I said, grinning. ‘But you’re right. It does feel stormy.’

‘Gives you a headache.’ Chris frowned. ‘And where are all the burglars who should be taking advantage of open windows? Where are all the tossers who’ve been drinking all day and fancy a fight?’

‘Anyone would think you wanted someone to commit a crime.’

‘Anyone would be right. That’s the thing about this job.’ He leaned forward, hugging the steering wheel, watching the traffic on the main road. ‘Everyone thinks a knife-wielding maniac will get you, but the maniacs are few and far between. The boredom, on the other hand – that’s a killer.’

It was close to midnight when the control room asked for Lima Delta Two Six to respond.

‘Lima Delta Two Six receiving, over,’ I said.

‘Two Six, thank you. Could I head you towards Filford Street, Brixton? Reports of a disturbance, male and female voices shouting. Doing some checks on the road now for you. Show you towards?’

‘Two Six, do we have the exact address?’

‘The caller said the noise was coming from nearby. She couldn’t be more specific. She said it could have been from one of the houses or from the yards.’

I frowned. ‘Two Six, confirm the yards? Did she mean the garden?’

‘I’ve no further information on that, I’m afraid, and she’s no longer on the line’

‘Two Six all received. Show us towards.’

‘No bother.’ Chris was already turning the car. ‘I know Filford Street. It’s a residential street on the edge of our ground, near enough to Loughborough Junction, but it’s got an industrial bit in the middle by the train line. There’s a builder’s merchant and some offices and a dodgy little garage in the arches under the railway. She must mean there.’

‘Is there any street in this area you don’t know?’

‘After fifteen years? Doubt it.’ He grinned.

I imagined driving around South London for another fourteen years and ten months and wilted, just a little. I didn’t know what I wanted to do yet, but I knew I wanted to do more than respond to 999 calls in an area I thought of as my own.

‘Lima Delta Two Six.’

I answered, ‘Two Six receiving.’

‘Looking at the CAD, it came in as a possible domestic. The caller said she heard a man and a woman shouting at one another.’

I looked at Chris, who snorted. ‘Just our luck.’

There was nothing good about a domestic violence incident, especially one where the address wasn’t known and the control room couldn’t check if the police had responded to a previous incident. Even when the victim had called us, they could change their mind at the sight of a gang of black-clad officers laying hands on their partner. It was hard enough to subdue a large, violent, possibly drunk or drugged-up bloke without his missus thumping you. There were times when the victim was the one who ended up being taken in for assault on a police officer. There were times when sympathy for the victim ran very low indeed, though I hadn’t yet run out of patience with them.

Then there were the times when the victim promised us through chipped teeth, tears in their rapidly closing eyes, that they hadn’t been injured by their partners. They had fallen down the stairs. They had burned their own hands, preparing dinner or ironing. They had walked into doors. They had tripped and bruised themselves. They bruised easily, they said. One woman told me, very seriously, that she had pulled out the clump of hair that lay on the kitchen floor herself, because it wouldn’t sit neatly when she had her hair in a ponytail. They sat through the thirty or so questions on the form we were required to fill in, shaking their heads at every one. They were scared. They were afraid of making things worse for themselves, or their children.

They were no help to us at all.

In my two months on the streets I’d been to plenty of domestics and I’d learned the rules. The female officers were there to deal with the victim, to coax them into telling us enough to make it worth our while to prosecute the suspect. The male officers provided the muscle. It bothered me enormously that everyone assumed I was capable of talking the victim around, just because we shared the experience of being female. It felt like a lot of responsibility. Conscientiously, I’d read the statistics. Two women died every week in the
UK at the hands of a partner or ex-partner. One incident of domestic violence was reported to the police every minute. One in four women experienced domestic violence during their lives. On average, women endured thirty-five incidents of domestic abuse before contacting the police.

And then I showed up the thirty-sixth time and stumbled through my arguments for why the victim should trust us. As if we could make it all go away. As if we could save them.

It had been two months, and so far I remembered all of their faces. So far, none of them had turned up on the daily briefing as the borough’s latest homicide.

I looked, though. Every time.

‘Two Six, that’s received.’ I said. ‘Short ETA.’

‘Stick the lights on,’ Chris said. ‘No sirens. We don’t want to give them too much warning, do we?’

I watched the road, feeling my heart rate rise as we headed, quite fast, towards Filford Street. It was nine minutes since the call had come in to the control room. Not a long time. There was every chance the incident, whatever it was, could still be taking place. Trying to be subtle about it in case Chris made fun of me, I checked that my CS gas canister was on my belt, and my baton was in its holster. I was fine at combat training. I just didn’t know if I was any good at combat. I hadn’t had the chance to try. The new girl was never going to be allowed first crack at arresting a rowdy drunk. I needed to do it, though, for the sake of my confidence, and for my reputation. The rota needed officers who were good in a scrap, who could back you up if you got into trouble. I had to prove myself.

Filford Street was narrow and shabby, with terraced Victorian houses on one side and the industrial units Chris had described on the other. It was also deserted. Chris drove along it with the windows down.

‘Can’t hear anything.’

‘Me neither.’ I was leaning forward, scanning the street for any movement. Nothing.

We passed under the railway line, the patrol car’s engine sounding twice as loud as the noise bounced off the brickwork, and Chris swung the car into a tight turn before heading back the way we’d come.

I pointed. ‘There. Outside that house, halfway down on the left. I bet that’s the informant.’