Paul Finch - Strangers

‘Most punters would be surprised to learn there’s any kind of prostitution out on the road networks,’ one of the girls said. ‘People drive around all day and never see anything.’

‘That’s true,’ Slater replied. ‘We’re going to train you up on that as well. Because you start openly touting at some service stations and you’ll be locked up by Traffic before you can say “Cynthia Payne”. It’s the quieter spots the girls tend to work from: lay-bys, lorry parks, picnic areas – especially at night, when they’re deep in shadow. Again … sorry not to sweeten this for you, but it’s in those shadows where you’ll need to be. And it isn’t going to be nice.’

They broke for coffee at around eleven, and were on their way down to the canteen when Slater sidled up alongside Lucy.

‘PC Clayburn, is it?’ he asked.

Lucy waited to let the others pass. ‘That’s right, sir.’

He stopped next to her. ‘You were the one involved in the Mandy Doyle incident?’

Lucy’s heart sank, but there was never any option these days other than to admit her error and hope to brazen it out. ‘Right again, sir.’

He regarded her with an odd kind of indifference, which she found more unnerving than she would if he’d been openly angry. ‘So … what?’ he said. ‘You just admit it like that? No excuses? No convoluted self-justification?’

‘None whatever, sir. I dropped a total bollock, and that’s why I’m here now … I’m trying to make up for it.’

He readjusted the pile of paperwork under his arm. ‘I worked with Mandy Doyle on the Drugs Squad. We were partners for three years.’

Lucy’s cheeks reddened. ‘I’m just glad she’s alive, sir.’

‘So am I.’ He yanked at his tie to loosen it even more. ‘She’s an idiot, by the way. Always was.’

Lucy thought she’d misheard. ‘Sir?’

‘Mandy,’ he explained. ‘Spent her entire career trying to prove she’s as tough as the lads. Made up for her lack of imagination with a bolshiness that extended right across the board. Difficult enough when you were a similar rank. But if you were lower, you could expect to put up with a whirlwind of shit. But why am I telling you that, eh?’

Lucy was temporarily lost for words. ‘I … didn’t know her that well.’

He shrugged. ‘Lucky you. Or unlucky. She obviously had to blame someone once she went and got herself shot.’

‘Strictly speaking, sir, it was me who went and …’

‘Uh-uh.’ He shook his head. ‘I read all about it, PC Clayburn. You had a guy in custody on suspicion of raping and brutalising an old lady, yeah? But by his own admission, and as later excavation of the deposition site revealed, he’d also murdered two young women. That should have put him in a different category. That meant he was physically pretty adept, and yet your gaffer went and left you – five days into CID – on your own, handcuffed to him.’

‘There was a police driver …’

‘The driver’s irrelevant. He was in a separate compartment of the vehicle.’

With Radio One playing , Lucy reminded herself.

‘He couldn’t necessarily have known what was going on in the back,’ Slater added. ‘Even if Haygarth hadn’t produced a gun, he might still have overpowered you.’

‘I was still a police officer, sir.’

‘Your loyalty to DI Doyle is touching, if a tad misplaced. She spent the next year saying you’d almost got her killed, when the reality was exactly the opposite – it was her who almost got you killed.’

Lucy preferred not to ponder that, even though her mum had – excessively. You didn’t dice with death every day as a copper, but it happened more often than in most civilian occupations. It didn’t pay to dwell on the near misses, to wonder what might have happened rather than what did happen. That was a sure-fire way to cost you your nerve for future such situations. But sometimes it was an effort to suppress those distracting thoughts.

‘You never should have been left in that vehicle on your own,’ Slater concluded.

‘I still looked the other way when I shouldn’t have.’

‘Oh hell …’ For the first time, Slater’s blank expression slackened; he almost smiled. ‘I wouldn’t have fancied watching a scrote like that take a piss either. The fact is there should have been two of you, minimum. And that was Mandy Doyle’s fault. She had tactical command, so she ought to have taken care of it.’

‘I’m glad you see it that way, sir. Not everyone does.’

‘Shit, Lucy …’ He walked again; she followed. ‘You know what this job’s like. Fill a form in wrong and it can follow you for the rest of your career if it suits someone’s purpose. But DI Doyle’s gone now on a medical, so theoretically that’s a clean slate for you.’

‘I want to get back into CID.’

‘I know. Priya told me.’

‘Can you and DSU Nehwal make it happen?’

‘Is that your burning ambition?’ he asked. It sounded like a genuine question.

‘It’s what I joined up for in the first place.’

This time he did smile. ‘So what were you watching as a kid? Cagney and Lacey ? Prime Suspect ? No offence intended … with me it was Miami Vice.’

‘Yeah, well … I guess we all got a bit of a shock when the reality hit us.’

‘Telling me. Anyway, the truth is, Lucy, we need detectives. Urgently … and I mean everywhere. Special units too, not just Division. Too many people are joining up these days who are only interested in fast-track promotion, and CID’s the wrong place for that.’ He halted at the entrance to the canteen. ‘So if you’re serious, and you do a job for us … we might be able to assist. It’s early days though. I mean we’ve got to catch a killer first.’

‘And you really think the Intel Unit’s going to have a role in that, sir?’ she asked. ‘Isn’t it more likely forensics’ll nab her? Or some good old-fashioned detective work?’

He shrugged as he walked inside. It was already noisy and crowded, mainly with plain clothes and civvie admin staff from the MIR, though uniforms and traffic wardens occupied some of the tables. They threaded their way through to the service counter with difficulty.

‘We’re dealing with someone who’s deadly serious about what she’s doing,’ Slater said over his shoulder. ‘You can tell that by the scorecard she’s racking up. It’s always going to be shoe-leather that brings someone like that to heel. Whether that’s Plod going door-to-door, detectives bouncing around the MIR having great ideas, or you lasses walking those grubby roads in your kinky boots … it doesn’t really matter.’

‘We just nab her any way we can.’

‘Correct.’

But Lucy was under no illusion. Slater was clearly disposed to be her friend – possibly because, at thirty, she was older and more experienced than most of the other Intel Unit girls and maybe, therefore, was someone he felt he could look to. The Mandy Doyle incident aside, her record was pretty good – so that could only help. Alternately, he might just fancy her. But even that was tolerable if, when all this was over, it meant he and Priya Nehwal could exert some influence in her favour. And by the sounds of it, there was one sure way to make that happen – feel the collar of Jill the Ripper.

No pressure then.

‘You sure no one’s going to see us?’ Barney wondered tautly.

Kev rolled his eyes in that exasperated way he’d so perfected during the many years of their relationship. ‘You tell me, Barn. Who’s actually going to see us? Look …’ He pointed through the van window at a patch of diminutive lights twinkling some distance away. ‘That’s Bickershaw.’ Now he pointed in the other direction, indicating a similar scattering of lights, so distant in this case that they were only noticeable because all other landscape features were hidden by the autumn darkness. ‘And that’s Leigh. So where are we, Barn?’