I Watson - Director's cut

She coloured up, reddish-brown, hardwood.

Wooderson loved it. It stirred a memory. But that was wrong. The thought was always with him, day and night. Her bony thighs wrapped around him, her groin pressing against him and her hair, flashing along her parting, black as coal and charged with static. It was a gutless sensation. Like bereavement but worse. Time didn't make it easier. Not when he had to see her every day and listen to her conversation with the others, particularly Butler with whom she had formed some kind of attachment.

“Look,” he said. “Believe it or not, I don't want to lose you.” “Why don't I believe you?”

“Anyway, even if you do go and, there's still what, three days? If anything breaks here you'll be back. I'll bell you personally. I've still got your number somewhere.”

He'd said it for a response, nothing more. Control could get her day or night. It went with the job. You couldn’t get away from the job. She said sharply, “Does your wife know you've still got it?”

Wooderson grimaced. The mention of his wife dulled the memory. “Get out of here. Go and iron something. Maybe that chip between your shoulder blades.”

She glared across the desk.

The coldness between them, the result of fall-out, the radiation of bodies that had got too close, felt like the curious chill of too much sun. Looking at him now, nicotine stained, ruffled, even a faint trace of dandruff on the blue, she wondered what she'd ever seen in him. Even his aftershave hung around like a cheap cigarette. He looked like a civil servant or a banker who knew there was nothing else till retirement. That sort of acceptance dragged on the face as well as the soul. And the booze he drank the night before and, from the bottle in his desk during the day, came at you from every pore and every breath. Before long, she knew, he'd be history.

But right now, that wasn't soon enough.

She left him looking gloomily out of the first floor window. The city that he could see was dripping under a belt of cloud, the colour of a body on a PM slab, once the blood had been hosed away. DC Anian Stanford was convinced that Inspector Jack Wooderson was a loser, a man who'd climbed one rung too many. Sooner rather than later he would be found out. Unfortunately, she found out too late. In a vindictive sort of way, the way in which lovers part, she looked forward to his downfall.

Her origins lay in the subcontinent, but they were long gone. Thought of occasionally, particularly now that Asians were winning Booker prizes and making inroads into films and TV, but it was more out of sadness than anger. She never wanted to wear a sari, for Christ sakes, but she never knew where she belonged. She called herself British and, that's what her passport said, but the British never accepted that and never would. She was born in England and raised in England but that didn't mean a thing to the Anglo-Saxons. They were islanders, removed from the rest of the world. As far as they were concerned she was from over there, somewhere, and owned a corner shop or a takeaway. And the sooner she got back the better they'd like it.

She had never known her parents. Just hours old she'd been found outside a Catholic orphanage. Anian had been written on the cardboard box. For all the nuns knew, the box might have carried exotic fruit from Asia. Anian might have been the name of a prickly pear. At a year old she'd been adopted from our Blessed Lady's Home by the Stanfords, an English, Catholic, working class family that had a ready made sister for her. Lisa Stanford was two years older and white but in those days blacks and browns could go to whites and no one had a problem.

When she walked from the small office she found three uniforms and a detective sergeant waiting. There were a dozen more uniforms at Hinckley but they were out, on the streets or pulling nights. The four men turned toward her, asking the question. They all knew about her affair with Wooderson.

“I might be seconded to HQ,” she said in a downbeat voice that came at you full of London Town.

DS Sam Butler tut-tutted the idea. He was the only man on the team she trusted. She could talk to him and know that it would go no further. With him there was no innuendo, no eye contact that went on too long and meant something else, no flirting whatsoever. Talking to him was like talking to family. Safe and easy. And predictable. Once Cole had gone and dinner had finished the booze had made conversation easy. The baby had cried and she'd seen him as a father. Some men, not many, were made for the job. Sam Butler was one of them. She'd wondered fleetingly, what sort of father Cole would have made. Not very good, very absent, was her guess. She'd held the baby. Lucy. Arms and legs and big eyes that had stayed blue and a little smile that was wind that kicked you in the middle.

“When?”

Butler's question dragged her back. “Monday, unless we can come up with something new. Oh, Sam, we've got to. This is a real shit.” “Don't worry. We've got a few days yet. I'll think of something.” The DS gave her his best smile of encouragement but it wasn't convincing.

She lowered her voice, “Jack's being an absolute arsehole.” “Expected nothing less, did you?” Butler resisted an impulse to mention office affairs and shrugged. “Men of his age, and mine come to think of it, we tend to panic when we know it's all gone by and there's fuck all in front.”

She threw him a grin. It came from nowhere and changed her mood and his. Still smiling she said, “How can you say that with Lucy and all?” She turned toward the door. “Think of something, Sam. Quickly.” “I will, but in the office you shouldn’t be so familiar – you’ll get people talking and they do enough of that already. You should try sergeant or DS Butler or even skipper. I'm easy.”

She turned back. “You've always been easy Sam.” She stuck out her tongue. It was pink, girlish, and caught Butler right where it hurt. The door swung shut.

Hinckley nick was quiet; it was that time of the morning, the uncivilized hour, the time when milkmen filching double rounds started out. The few patrolling coppers were parked up in their favourite corners, taking turns to close their eyes. A PC on the front desk yawned and stretched. It was close to the end of his shift and he was winding down, as he had been for the last two hours. The desk phone rang. He listened for a few moments then pressed hold. Or at least he meant to. Instead, he cut the line.

“It's Missing Persons, Sarge, about a message sent this afternoon.” Sergeant Mills groaned. He'd been hoping for a quiet end to the shift, now paperwork loomed large. He said, “Missing Persons? At this hour? Are they taking the piss, or what? Who filed it?”

“Came from next door. Sam Butler.”

“Well?”

“Well what, Sarge?”

“Well, what do they say?”

“Oh, yes.” He examined the note he’d scribbled on his pad. “They've made a link with these missing women and two more out of area. The other two are pregnant.”

The Sergeant shook his head. “Pregnant? Are you sure it's for us? Sounds like a wrong number to me. I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll leave a note on DS fucking Butler's desk asking him to get back to… Did you get a name?”

The kozzer drew a quick breath.

“It's always a good idea to get a name, son, particularly if you're going to ring them back. Stick with me. You'll learn something every day.”

Margaret Domey was based at Sheerham and known in the office as the psychologist from hell. When all five-four and slightly swollen belly of her breezed into the nick the duty sergeant pretended to be doing something else. Bollocks to that for a living. She wore a grey two-piece, low heels, and thin lips. She wasn't unattractive and with her slightly fuller figure a lot of the kozzers took more notice than usual.