Simon Lelic - A Thousand Cuts

Lucia was silent. Gently, she nodded. Cole still had his back to her and rather than looking at him she looked at his desk. There was a tube of Colgate, she noticed, by the telephone. There were piles of paper and foolscap folders, and over these and what little surface of the desk was visible, there were fluorescent pink Post-it notes dotted like acne. Some were blank but most had on them a short note, invariably bracketed between question marks. Lucia found herself wondering what would happen to conviction rates in north-east London were the Post-it notes suddenly to become unstuck. Or perhaps more cases would come to court rather than growing stale in an atmosphere of indecision.

‘That’s it, Lucia. You know why. You don’t need me to tell you why.’ Cole turned to face her. He had not shaved, Lucia noticed. Either he had been running late that morning or he had been nervous about bringing a razor to the skin under his nose and around his lips, blotched as it still was with cold sores.

‘No,’ Lucia said. ‘You don’t need to tell me why. But you could tell me who.’

‘Who. Who what?’

‘Who it is that Travis can count on to be such a good friend to his cause.’

Cole shook his head. ‘I told you before, Lucia: don’t be naive.’ He moved behind the desk.

‘Come on, Guv. What am I going to do with it if you tell me?’

Cole sighed. He rubbed his head again. ‘Then why do you need to know, Lucia? Why do you always need to know?’

Lucia almost laughed. She almost reminded the DCI what she did, what they both did. She resisted. She said instead, ‘Elliot Samson’s father told me that the school was changing status. He mentioned a government scheme, private funding, more autonomy. He said it was one of the first.’

Cole shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’

‘There’s a lot of money involved in that sort of thing, I would imagine. A lot of commercial interests.’

‘Probably. Possibly. Who the hell knows?’

‘I don’t suppose a public prosecution would look particularly good, would it? Chances are it would scare a few people the government wouldn’t want to see scared.’

Cole sat down. He picked up one of the sheets of paper on his desk and peered under the Post-it note that was attached to it.

‘Or is it more straightforward than that? Is it closer to home? The superintendent,’ Lucia said. ‘Your boss. I notice he’s on the school’s board of governors.’

Cole looked at Lucia without raising his head. ‘Careful, Lucia.’

‘I doubt he’d be too keen to be dragged into all of this, would he? I expect he would rather we left Mr Travis and his school well alone.’

Cole put down the paperwork he was holding. ‘For an officer who has just mouthed her way into a suspension, Detective Inspector May, you seem remarkably reluctant to shut the fuck up.’

Lucia glared. She bit down on the retort that was wrestling for control of her tongue. Cole exhaled into the silence and returned his attention to his desk.

‘So what happens now?’ Lucia said at last.

‘There’ll be a hearing. You’ll be reprimanded. Demoted maybe, at least for a while. You’ll be advised to request a transfer.’

‘A transfer? To where?’ Lucia narrowed her eyes. ‘Advised by whom?’

‘To anywhere you like that’s not CID. By the disciplinary board. By your colleagues probably. By me.’

‘By you,’ Lucia echoed. ‘And if I don’t?’

Cole’s lips curled into a humourless smile. ‘Then I expect that you will be transferred anyway.’

‘You can’t do that.’

‘I can and I will. What’s the big deal, Lucia? You and I both know it’d be doing you a favour.’

‘A favour? In what way would it be doing me a favour?’

Cole reclined in his seat. He gestured with a nod towards the door. ‘Before. Just now. What was going on out there?’

Lucia folded her arms. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’

‘Watch your tone, Inspector.’

‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. But I’d be interested in hearing what you think you saw. Sir.’

For a moment it seemed that Cole would not answer. He was glowering at Lucia and almost as she returned his stare she could see the skin on his face reddening.

‘I saw trouble where before there was calm,’ he said. ‘I saw disruption and discord where before the officers in this department would have counted their colleagues as their closest friends. That’s what I saw, Inspector.’

‘Before. You mean before I joined.’

‘Yes, Lucia. Before you joined.’

Lucia bobbed her head. ‘And that’s what you saw. That’s all you saw.’

The DCI nodded.

Lucia pulled herself upright. ‘You’ve spoken to Travis from what I understand,’ she said. ‘The two of you must have found you had plenty to discuss. You must have found yourselves getting along like sergeant majors at a reunion.’

‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’ said Cole.

Lucia was on her way to the door. She stopped and turned before she answered. ‘Nothing that will worry you, Chief Inspector. It just seems to me that you and Travis have in common a certain way of seeing things.’ She made to move away and then checked herself again. ‘Although, thinking about it, maybe seeing isn’t quite the right word.’

Harry called out to Lucia as she strode from her desk towards the exit. She glanced towards him and half raised her hand but she did not slow. Walter said something as she passed his chair but Lucia ignored him. When she reached the door to the stairwell, she swung it harder than she had expected to. The handle hammered into the already cracked plaster and the sound of wood and glass and metal trembling fled down the stairs and into the depths of the building.

Lucia followed.

As she stepped on to the street she barely noticed the heat. She passed a newsagent, then turned back and went inside. From the stooped Bangladeshi man behind the counter, she bought twenty Marlboro reds and a box of matches and did not wait for her change. She found a bench. It was coated with graffiti and bird muck – like every bench in London, so it seemed – and smeared at one end with something that was probably but not necessarily banana. Lucia sat down anyway. The bench faced the road. Almost immediately a bus pulled up to the kerb. Its doors opened and the driver looked at Lucia and Lucia looked at the driver and the doors closed and the bus pulled away. Lucia took out a cigarette and with her third match managed to light it.

She smoked. Three buses later, she was still smoking. Four or five filters lay at her feet, two of them at least still smouldering. After using it to light another cigarette, she threw the one she was holding to the floor. The first drag of the new cigarette tasted even worse than the last one of the old. Each lungful, in fact, marked a steady decline; Lucia took no pleasure, no relief from what she was doing. She inhaled a second time, coaxing the flame towards the filter, but she drew too hard and she gagged. She coughed. She leant forwards and she retched. She was sick, and her sick splattered across her shoes and swamped the cigarette butts on the ground. Another bus pulled up but did not stop long enough even to open its doors. Lucia spat. She sat upright, wiped her mouth on her sleeve. She had tears in her eyes and though it was the shock of throwing up that had summoned them, she found herself unable to halt their flow. She buried her head in the crook of her elbow. She cleared her throat and spat again. The packet of cigarettes was clutched in her hand, she realised. It was squashed now, from where she had gripped it as a reflex to her stomach muscles contracting. She cast the packet on to the bench, into the banana, and stood up.

For some time Lucia walked. She realised she was drifting towards the school so she took a left and then another and found herself on the borders of Finsbury Park. It was a weekday, not yet lunchtime, and the sun was barely discernible, yet the grass was strewn with blankets and bodies and barbecues ready to be fired up. Lucia found a spot away from the crowd and lay back. She could taste tar and vomit. Her throat felt as though she had just woken up from sleeping all night with her mouth open. She craved water but now she had stopped moving the thought of getting to her feet once again and heading off in search of some filled her with lethargy. It was London and it was summer, Lucia reasoned; it would have to rain eventually. When it did, she would still be lying here. She would part her lips and angle her face to the sky and let the raindrops hit her face and run into her mouth.