Peter Helton - Falling More Slowly

There was only one thing at work that had improved recently. The single thing that had eased off was the frequency with which male colleagues, civilians and officers alike, were trying to drag her under their duvets. She had turned every one of them down, politely and firmly. Well, firmly, anyway. Then recently Claire French had warned her that a rumour had sprung up that she was gay. Offers of drinks, meals and the cinema had drastically fallen off since then. Not that she’d ever consider starting a relationship with someone from the force anyway. She’d never been attracted to another officer. First she had wondered why, since she liked her job well enough and couldn’t now imagine doing anything else. But lately she had come to think that two police officers, even if they didn’t have to work closely together, could only succeed in getting in each other’s way — or worse, dragging each other down. And surely the job was tough enough as it was. Anyway, didn’t sleeping with someone from work display a certain lack of imagination? It wasn’t as if she didn’t have the opportunity to meet other people. She encountered new people every day. Problem was they were either victims or perpetrators, and she didn’t fancy either much. There was the life-drawing class, when she managed to attend, but the current intake didn’t do much to inspire her.

It wasn’t true, was it, DC French had asked eventually. Of course it wasn’t. Though she had felt a bit of a fraud for asserting it so bluntly. She was by no means sure. Fairfield thought she was probably bisexual, or would be, given half a chance, only so far it simply hadn’t presented itself. Well, not since school anyway and she doubted if that really counted. Ultimately it had remained an unconsummated affair anyway. And even if. She’d hardly tell DC French about it, the nosy cow.

‘Another circuit, Kat?’

It was Katarina but she didn’t mind the ‘Kat’, not from Sorbie, anyway. It had been Katarina Vasiliou until what her mother called, had always called, ‘Rina’s disastrous marriage’. Of course any marriage not involving a nice Greek boy would have been disastrous in her mother’s eyes. It had lasted all of one year. Well, technically she was still married and the name was useful, at least. Fairfield was an easier name to get on with in the force than Vasiliou, she was certain of it. No, she didn’t mind Sorbie calling her Kat when no one else was around. Jack was all right. Loyal, anyway. ‘Yes, just keep cruising.’ She went back to concentrating on the photocopy of the map she’d stuck to the dashboard. On it she had marked all the muggings attributed to the same gang with yellow marker pen. She was willing the resultant mess to turn into a revealing pattern that would instantly tell where they would strike next, preferably with a loud ta-dah sound, but however long she stared it still looked random. Just like herself and Sorbie, the scooter muggers cruised around town, looking for a likely victim. They struck three, four or five times in quick succession, then disappeared from the radar. All she had gleaned so far was that the gang operated strictly outside the zone covered by CCTV. As expected, the cameras installed around the centre had never brought down the overall incidents of street crime, they had simply succeeded in moving certain types into adjacent areas.

Into the yellow dots, in her clear, upright handwriting, she had logged the time of each incident. Now, with a notepad on one raised knee, she sorted the times into a list. Forty-two incidents so far. Not to have caught them by now, after all the effort expended, was becoming embarrassing. They didn’t need the Evening Post to point it out. Denkhaus was screaming blue murder that their clear-up rates were beginning to look ridiculous. As she listed the times in barely legible handwriting due to Sorbie’s driving, a pattern did begin to emerge. So far all they had realized was that the gang struck from dusk onward. They obviously liked the relative darkness but for some reason had never attacked after eleven in the evening. Now she noticed something else. So far they had never struck at weekends.

Sorbie was stunned by the news. More, it seemed to upset his sense of how decent criminals ought to operate. ‘I can’t get over it, you’re telling me they work Monday to Friday and about seven to eleven? They treat it like a job?’

‘I know. They’ve certainly got better hours than we have. I wonder what their pension plans are like.’

‘And their job’s getting easier. Since Denkhaus told the paper it was safer for victims not to resist, people have just handed over their stuff. The last victim was completely unharmed.’ Sorbie snorted contemptuously as though that was a failing on the part of the victim. ‘The bastards just had to ask nicely and were given the stuff.’

‘Denkhaus was absolutely right to make that statement. It’s much safer to just give them what they ask for. They have clearly demonstrated that they are willing to use a lot of force. But it’s the kind of advice that sticks in your throat. You see what I see, Jack?’

‘Yup.’ Two identical blue scooters had joined the stream of traffic from a side street and were now weaving across the lanes ahead of them, going south along the Bath Road. The scooters the gang used had been reported as being all kinds of colours. But Fairfield had noticed that they seemed to get progressively darker and had come to the conclusion that the gang used spray paint to change the appearance of their transport. It was easier to do dark over light with a spray can.

‘No passengers though. Shall I hassle after them?’

‘Just try and keep them in sight, might as well have something hilarious to look at.’

Sorbie obliged and noted the index numbers as he got close enough. Both scooters were sporting L-plates and were being ridden accordingly.

Sorbie snorted with contempt. ‘All over the place. Makes you wonder how they survive long enough to take the test. Someone ought to drag them off the things and read them the bloody highway code. In Braille .’

The traffic was still heavy, the wet roads glistened. As the rain thinned to a fine drizzle the windscreen wipers slowed to an occasional squeak. He kept the scooters in view, as instructed, but knew they weren’t the ones, not just because of the L-plates which could come off quickly. No, when he saw the muggers he would know them. And these guys ahead of him were criminally stupid rather than criminal. They appeared to be keeping up a shouted conversation between themselves as they drove through and around traffic and scooted side by side in the middle lane.

‘Still going south.’ Sorbie kept up a murmured commentary to himself.

Fairfield looked up. ‘Let’s carry on up here, then turn round at the old brewery, then back towards the centre. This place is due a mugging or two, I feel.’

Female intuition, Sorbie thought, but kept it to himself. ‘That route takes us past Mitchell’s place of course.’ He looked at his superior.

Fairfield stiffened. ‘So?’

Ady Mitchell was a fence. Fairfield knew he was a fence, but proving it was something else. Normally she’d hardly be interested but since he set up in the city theft and robbery, mostly of mobile phones and PDAs, had shot up. Certain types of burglary too. He had plenty of previous. Fairfield refused to believe this was a coincidence and she didn’t believe he’d gone straight. It had become a pet project of hers but so far proving a connection had eluded her. Mitchell had finally made a complaint against her when out of frustration she had taken to sitting in her car near his lock-up, one in a row of brick-built Victorian warehouses at the edge of Brislington, without official sanction. She knew at the time it was obsessive behaviour and that she ought to get a life but it had gnawed at her pride and still did. It had earned her an official reprimand for unauthorized surveillance.