Paul Finch - Strangers

‘MALCOLM!’ she shouted.

Peabody might have been a newbie, but he threw himself forward and crooked his own arms around the assailant’s bullet-shaped head, crushing his Neanderthal features in a brutal bear-hug, and at the same time dropping down with his full weight, dragging the guy to the pavement. The three of them landed heavily, the suspect on top of Peabody, Lucy front-down on top of the suspect. The two men got the worst of it, the suspect primarily as Lucy dug her left elbow into his solar plexus and drew her CS spray with her right hand, ejecting its contents into his gagging, choking face. He squawked and convulsed. With a satisfying click , Peabody snapped one bracelet onto his brawny left wrist.

‘You’re locked up, you bastard!’ Lucy gasped down at him as he writhed, using her right forearm to compress his throat. ‘You’re bloody locked up!’ She put her radio mic to her lips. ‘1485 to Three … re. the attack at the phone-box on Darthill Road. One detained at the junction of Pimbo Lane and Thirlmere Place. Require immediate supervision and prisoner transport, over.’

‘Pig-slut!’ the prisoner choked. ‘You’ll fucking die for this …’

‘What did you say?’ Lucy asked, levering herself backwards now that Peabody, who was clearly stronger and handier than he looked, had got both the prisoner’s hands cuffed behind his back. She grabbed the guy’s throat in a gloved claw. ‘Eh?’

‘Nothing,’ he gagged. ‘For Christ’s sake … I said nothing!’

‘Nah …’ She shook her head. ‘Sounded to me like your response to caution was “okay, I did it … you’ve got me banged to rights”. Did you hear that confession too, PC Peabody?’

‘Absolutely, PC Clayburn,’ Peabody replied. He wasn’t just handier than he looked, Malcolm Peabody, he was in the right job too. ‘Abso-bloody-lutely!’

Lucy groaned with relief as she stripped her gear off in the female locker room: the straight-leg combat trousers, the duty belt with its various appointments, the stab vest, the radio harness, the high-viz jacket. After twenty hours on duty it all seemed a dead weight. She stepped gratefully into the shower and braced herself against the cubicle wall as the hot spray lashed over her.

Making an important arrest just before the end of shift always guaranteed you hours of overtime, which was sometimes a good thing if you needed the extra cash, but was rarely desirable when it kept you busy all night. Lucy checked the time as she towelled down, and then climbed into her underwear and picked up her motorbike leathers. It was almost eight. Beyond the confines of the locker room, the rest of the station was humming with life, but given that the morning team were now out and about, she had this quiet little space to herself. At least, she thought she did.

‘PC Clayburn?’ a voice said.

Lucy glanced around, surprised to see that while she’d been in the shower cubicle, an Indian woman, somewhere in her early fifties, had entered the locker room and was now perched on a bench near the door, fiddling with an iPad.

‘Who’s asking?’ Lucy said.

‘Oh good … hostility from the word-off.’ The Indian lady stood up, stiffly and rather painfully, and dug into her coat pocket. ‘Just what I’m in the mood for.’

Lucy eyed her warily. Whoever she was, she was plump featured, with a short, squat stature, her thick, greying hair tied in a single, rope-like ponytail. She wore a heavy waxed jacket over jeans and a scruffy grey sweatshirt. The look didn’t especially suit her. Most likely it wouldn’t suit anyone of that barrel-shaped built. But for this reason alone Lucy now suspected she was in the presence of someone who’d reached a stage in their career where appearance counted for little compared to reputation.

The newcomer flipped open a leather wallet to reveal her warrant card.

‘“Priya” to my friends, “Detective Superintendent Nehwal” to you. I appreciate you’ve been on all night, PC Clayburn, but I’d like a quick word if poss … without the attitude.’

‘Certainly, ma’am. If …’ Lucy was briefly tongue-tied. She didn’t know DSU Priya Nehwal personally, but she certainly knew about her. Everyone knew about her. ‘If … if I can just finish getting dressed …?’

Nehwal glanced at her watch, as if this itself was an imposition. ‘I’ll wait outside.’

Priya Nehwal was a thirty-year veteran and ace thief-taker, a status for which she’d been decorated many times. She was now one of the most senior investigators in Greater Manchester’s Serious Crimes Division, having solved many more high-level offences – like murder, rape, robbery and arson – than anyone else currently serving. She was something of a poster-child for the women entering the job, especially Asian women.

Lucy hurried to finish getting dressed, and left the building through its side personnel-door, rucksack on her back, crimson motorcycle helmet tucked under one arm. The aptly named Robber’s Row wasn’t just a police station but the N Division’s administrative HQ, and as such a massive multi-floored redbrick monstrosity of a building, which occupied an enormous plot of land running alongside Tarwood Lane, the main thoroughfare into Crowley from Salford. It shared a forecourt with the local fire station, though when Lucy walked out there, nobody was waiting for her. She checked in the personnel car park at the rear of the nick, and even around the garages and in the vehicle pound, but again it was no dice. She finally found Nehwal some ten minutes later, in the small park on the other side of Tarwood Lane, where she’d unwrapped a plastic bag and was breaking up a squishy cheese-barm, fragments of which she scattered for the ducks clustered at the pond’s edge.

She didn’t bother looking round when Lucy approached.

‘Ma’am?’ Lucy finally said, feeling strangely self-conscious.

At a slim five foot eight, physically fit, with long black hair and handsome, feline looks as yet unlined by her years of police service, Lucy was aware that she cut quite a dash, especially when kitted out in the leathers she wore to ride her gleaming red Ducati Monster M900. But the presence of a living legend like Priya Nehwal, however much a ragamuffin she was in appearance, made Lucy feel gawky and awkward. It didn’t help, of course, that Nehwal had blazed a trail for female detectives though many decades of impressive work, and that Lucy had completely ruined her own CID chances in the very first week.

‘Heard you had a good lock-up last night?’ Nehwal said.

Lucy shrugged. ‘Common sense bobbying, ma’am.’

‘And now you’re the woman of the moment.’

‘I wouldn’t go that far, ma’am.’

Nehwal brushed crumbs from her hands and scrunched the plastic wrapper into her coat pocket. ‘Neither would I … but when you’re back on Division you’ve got to talk the talk.’

She pulled on a pair of fingerless woollen gloves. It was October 15 th, and though it had been a mild month so far, this particular morning was fresh to the point of chilliness.

‘Is this something important, ma’am?’ Lucy asked. ‘Only I’ve just finished a double-length shift …’

‘Ready for bed, are you?’

‘Well … the armchair. No point going to bed when I’m not actually on nights, but a couple of hours can’t hurt.’

‘Yes, well … sorry to rain on your parade, PC Clayburn, but sleep may not come so easily after this. Even so, it’ll be your call.’ Nehwal produced a morning paper, unrolled it and offered it to her. ‘What do you think?’

Lucy gazed at the front page, which in a massive banner-headline, read:

JILL THE RIPPER!

Underneath it, colour photographs depicted two side-by-side images. One was of a rural lay-by with a silver-black Lexus LS 430 parked in the middle, CSIs in Tyvek unspooling incident tape around it. The second one, clearly shot from a helicopter, displayed woodland from a high angle, with a red circle indicating an only partly visible forensics tent erected beneath the cover of the trees, and more diminutive Tyvek-clad figures.