Belinda Bauer - The Facts of Life and Death

How had he let that wedding nonsense go on for so long? He could see everything so clearly now. He felt as though he’d escaped a cult.

‘You’re very happy,’ King had said suspiciously.

‘Yes,’ he’d told her. ‘I broke up with Shirley.’

‘Oh dear. Was it awful?’

‘Yeah. But I don’t think she was my type.’

‘What’s your type?’

‘I’m not sure I have one.’

King had laughed and said, Very wise , and that was all they’d said on the matter.

Calvin looked up. Tony Coral was at the door of the incident room. He’d never mastered the phone system, even though it was the most basic version money could lease. Instead he liked to put the caller on hold and then get out of his chair with a creak and a sigh and wander about the building looking for the caller’s target recipient.

Now he put one hand against the door-frame and tilted, standing on one leg with the other extended behind him, as if he were about to glide into the incident room on ice skates.

‘Got a bloke here with a missing person.’

Calvin was the youngest at the station and the card players all looked at him, so he went out to the desk, to save Tony Coral the trouble of cutting the caller off.

‘I want to report someone missing,’ said the man on the phone. ‘Right, sir. Can I take your name, please?’

‘Marshall. David Marshall.’

‘And what’s the name of the person you believe to be missing?’

‘Georgia Sharpe.’

‘Sharpe with an e ?’

‘I think so. On the end.’

Calvin took all the details the form demanded. Georgia Sharpe was a teacher at Westmead Junior School. She was only twenty-something and he wondered out loud why her family weren’t reporting her missing.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Dave Marshall. ‘I think it’s just her and her father, and he lives miles off. Scotland or somewhere like that.’

‘Is she Scottish?’ said Calvin. An accent would be helpful on a missing-persons report.

‘No.’

‘Oh.’

‘Look,’ said Dave Marshall, ‘I hope I’m not wasting anyone’s time. I don’t know Georgia that well. She only started here in the summer. But she’s a nice person and very good at her job and I don’t think she’d miss work unless she was sick, and if she were sick then I think she’s the type who’d definitely call in, and she didn’t, and I couldn’t get an answer on her phone.’

‘OK, Mr Marshall,’ said Calvin. ‘We’ll send someone round to check whether she’s there and then if necessary we can take things further.’

Calvin would bet a pound to a pinch of dog shit that they’d find Georgia Sharpe in bed with flu or a boyfriend, but he liked saying We’ll send someone round. It was the kind of thing they said in American cop shows, even though he knew it would probably end up being just him going round and tapping on a window like an elf.

They’d give it twenty-four hours, of course. They always gave a missing person twenty-four hours to show up unless it was a child or someone had seen them bundled into a van.

Or they’d called their mother.

But that hadn’t happened in this case. This sounded far more straightforward.

Calvin was typing up the report to leave for whoever was on tomorrow night when Tony Coral came back again. He lowered his voice to a stage whisper.

‘Got a maid here with a box of pornographic videos.’

‘Good for her,’ said Calvin.

Coral jerked a thumb over his shoulder and back towards the front desk.

‘Name’s Sheila. She wants to talk to you.’

As the youngest, Calvin knew to be on his guard against pranks – especially on a Saturday night – so he followed Tony Coral with a frown of caution fixed firmly on his face.

But it wasn’t a prank.

It was much worse than that.

It was Shirley.

Shirley, with a cardboard box full of junk he’d left at her flat. Including three or four DVDs they’d watched together right at the start of their relationship, when they were still making an effort. It wasn’t hard-core porn – just Milfs and Big Boobs – but it still wasn’t the kind of thing Calvin wanted to assume ownership of across a police-station counter – especially from an ex-girlfriend who had obviously been drinking and crying in equal measure, from what he could see through the crack in the door.

He stopped dead and signalled Tony Coral back towards him.

‘That’s my girlfriend,’ he hissed.

‘Oh yes?’ said Tony Coral. He leaned again – backwards this time – to get a better view of Shirley. ‘Pretty maid,’ he said approvingly.

‘My ex-girlfriend,’ Calvin added.

‘Quite sturdy , in’t she?’

Calvin ignored that out of old loyalty. ‘We just broke up a week ago.’

‘Ah,’ said Coral, nodding as if he understood everything. Then he added, ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I don’t want to see her.’

‘Aah,’ nodded Coral. This time he obviously did understand.

‘Can you say I’m out on a job?’

‘I already said you were here.’

‘Can you say you were wrong?’

Tony Coral looked offended. ‘That would be lying.’

Calvin sighed. He knew Coral wasn’t joking; he really was a stickler for the truth, however inconvenient.

‘Then I’ll go out,’ he said. ‘Right now. Give me five minutes and then tell her I’m on a job and by then it’ll be the truth.’

‘Righto,’ said Coral. ‘What job?’

Calvin thought for a second. ‘That missing person that just came in. I’ll go out to Fairy Cross and knock on a few doors, OK?’

‘No problem,’ said Coral. ‘Shall I tell Sheila to come back another time?’

‘No! Jesus!’ Calvin hated this. The one true path was the one of least resistance and he desperately wanted never to have to see or speak to Shirley again. He realized that that was unrealistic, both living in the same smallish area of North Devon as they did, but the last thing he wanted was for Shirley to keep bringing his box of porn to him at work. Which he had no doubt she would do – otherwise she would have just dropped it off at his flat, or thrown it in the bin in the first place.

She wanted to embarrass him.

Calvin sighed.

He owed her that, really. He’d hurt Shirley; he’d broken her heart and ruined her wedding with the hand-torn invitations and the fucking owl. The least he could do was to go out there and let her embarrass the socks off him with a box of Milfs and an engagement ring in the face.

Then he had a better idea.

‘Can’t you confiscate it?’ he said. ‘It is porn, after all.’

Five minutes later, Shirley was walking home without the pornography, and Calvin Bridge was driving a pool car to Fairy Cross.

Dave Marshall hadn’t had a specific address, but Calvin thought that it wouldn’t take much knocking on doors to track down Georgia Sharpe’s home. Everyone knew everyone in little places like that, even if they were new. Sometimes especially if they were new.

He felt bad about Shirley, but really, she’d brought it on herself.

IT GOT DARK.

Ruby’s headache had gone, along with the warmth. A sharp breeze had picked up and she wished she were wearing a jumper over her potato sack.

There was much cheering as the torches were lit and the flags were brought out and the parade started, led by the town crier and two ragged lepers on towering stilts.

Ruby felt the thrill of being part of something that felt crazy and ancient, and squeezed Mummy’s hand in excitement.

They were part of a great river of people that wended its way down the hill to the old hospital. There were so few people left over to watch and clap the parade that they clapped and cheered themselves as they walked, and rang their leper bells.