‘Daddy!’ Hannah screamed, but the man kept moving. ‘Please stop.’
He looked back. Tears had cleared grey-white gulleys down his cheeks.
‘Daddy! You’re not my daddy…’
The man broke into a run again, leaving the child sobbing on the pavement.
‘Come on, Hannah, there’s a good girl.’ The middle-aged woman reached her.
‘No!’ Hannah refused to take the woman’s hand. ‘I don’t want you. I want my daddy!’
‘Whoever it was is gone now. Come back into school.’
‘He looked like my daddy until he turned around. I thought he was –’
‘You can sit in Mrs Jones’s room. We’ll send for your aunt. You can go home early. Would you like that, Hannah?’ The woman led the child back through the school gates.
Another member of staff tapped the teacher’s arm and mouthed, ‘Police?’
The teacher shook her head. ‘Ring the bell and get the children inside. Then telephone Hannah’s aunt. If the headmaster and Miss Davies think it’s warranted, they’ll contact the police.’
‘Happy birthday, dear Trevor,’ Peter Collins sang to his colleague Trevor Joseph as Lyn Sullivan walked through the door of the darkened living room of Trevor’s house carrying a chocolate and cream gateau ablaze with candles.
‘He’s not your “dear Trevor”, Peter, he’s mine,’
Lyn set the cake on the table in front of the crowd gathered around Trevor.
‘So he must be,’ Peter agreed. ‘No one’s given me a cake or a party since I was five years old.’
‘Difficult to organise when you spend every off-duty minute in that disgusting White Hart,’
Sergeant Anna Bradley, Peter’s colleague and companion for the evening observed.
‘How do you know it’s disgusting? You’ve never set foot in the place.’
‘I don’t need to step inside. You only have to look at the outside.’
‘Time to blow out the candles, Trevor.’ The smile on Lyn’s face was strained. After six months of living with Sergeant Trevor Joseph of the Serious Crimes Squad, the kindest thing she could think of saying to her friends and family, was that police officers were “different”. And they were. In the hours they kept, their habits, their lifestyle, their sense of humour – especially their sense of humour – and whatever went for the force in general, went doubly so for Sergeant Peter Collins of the Drug Squad.
Trevor’s closest friend could be difficult at the best of times, and it had been a while since she and Trevor had enjoyed the best of times. Four months to be precise, since a relationship, begun with so much promise, had deteriorated into grinding days of separate work schedules interspersed with solitary leisure times of missed opportunities. No matter which nursing shift she opted for, she invariably returned to an empty house. Whether she worked days, mornings, afternoons or nights, Trevor’s hours on the Serious Crimes Squad rarely coincided with her own.
It had taken a mammoth amount of juggling at the psychiatric hospital where she worked as a staff nurse, endless liaison over the telephone with Trevor’s immediate boss, Inspector Dan Evans and his colleague Sergeant Anna Bradley, plus numerous semi-serious threats to Trevor before she’d felt confident enough to arrange this party.
Even now she was waiting for the telephone to ring and summon half her guests away. So much so, she’d been unable to eat more than a mouthful of the buffet of cold salmon, cold sliced meats and salads she’d spent the last three days preparing.
She consoled herself with the thought that, once the candles were blown out, the drinking would begin in earnest. With luck Trevor would soon be too plastered to go out, even if he was called. The first evening he’d spent at home for over six weeks, and she’d been stupid enough to invite thirty other people.
‘Blow out the candles, Trevor. You’re wasting drinking time,’ Peter grumbled.
Trevor took a deep breath and blew over the cake.
‘I don’t appreciate cream being blasted on to my best bib and tucker, mate, even by a birthday boy.’ Andrew Murphy, who’d been a constable all his working life, flicked a fleck that had landed on his tweed jacket back in the direction of the cake.
‘After some of the places that jacket’s been, a blob of cream isn’t going to make any difference, Andy. It might even disguise the blood and tooth marks.’ Anna handed her plate to Lyn. ‘Large piece please, with a double helping of cream.’
‘How do you put up with her on your squad?’
Peter asked Trevor who was cutting the cake into thick, uneven slices.
‘A better question might be, how does Anna puts up with Dan and Trevor?’ Lyn eased the slices on to plates and handed them around.
‘Three more promotions and I’ll be able to push any sergeant in this town into clerical duties,’ Anna smiled through a mouthful of chocolate and cream.
‘Five more promotions and I’ll be able to order all policewomen back to paperwork, housework, and bed work.’ Peter touched his glass to Trevor’s.
‘Here’s to an all male force.’
Anna looked Peter in the eye. ‘Just wait until I’m your super, Sergeant.’
‘I doubt there’s a man on the force who has the faintest notion what sexual equality means,’ Lyn gave Peter a withering look.
‘I give all my women every opportunity to take their turn on top, as you’ll soon find out, Anna.’
Peter wrapped his arm around her waist.
‘I take it your past conquests used the vantage point to watch for something better coming in through the door.’ Anna took his hand from her waist and dropped it.
Bored with Peter’s banter, Lyn took the empty cake plate into the kitchen. Every inch of work surface was littered with abandoned plates, screwed up paper napkins, half-chewed chicken wings, dirty glasses and knives and forks. She opened the bin and the dishwasher. After scraping the plates, she began to stack the crockery and cutlery into the machine. When it was full she switched it on and debated whether to wait until the load had finished, or wash the overflow by hand.
‘I apologise for my tactless colleagues.’ Trevor crept up behind her and kissed her neck. ‘You should have invited your brother and the nurses from the hospital.’
‘This house isn’t big enough for my friends as well as yours.’
‘Then you should have just invited yours.’
‘For your birthday?’
He turned her around. Her eyes were on a level with his. She was six foot, barely an inch below his own height. He kissed her on the mouth, thoroughly and slowly. Her irritation with Peter Collins, and the evening in general, dissipated as she recalled exactly why she’d moved in with Trevor eight months ago.
‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’ she asked.
‘My birthday party. And for being here, with me. But would you mind very much if I organised something for just the two of us on your birthday?’
‘If I could have been sure you would have made the effort to be here, I would have done just that this evening.’
‘Are you on duty this weekend?’
‘Of course. Don’t tell me you’re not?’
‘I was hoping we could go down to Cornwall.’
‘To your mother’s farm?’ Her dark eyes sparkled at the prospect. She’d never met his family.
He’d told her about his mother, brother, sister-in-law, nieces and nephews and she’d spoken to them on the telephone, but all of Trevor’s protestations to the contrary had failed to reassure her that they approved of her living in his house.
‘I want to show you off.’
‘They might not like me.’
‘They’ll love you.’ He kissed her again. ‘And we’ll be able to visit all the secret dens I built when I was a boy.’
‘For an offer like that I’ll swap my shifts.’
He pulled her closer, until their bodies meshed.
‘We could go upstairs.’
‘Someone might notice.’
The kitchen door burst open, slamming painfully into Lyn’s spine. Peter pushed past.
‘We’re dying of thirst out there, mate, while you’re having it off with Florence Nightingale in here. Some bloody host you make.’
The drizzle-filled, saffron glow of the street lamps highlighted the filth that clung to the rusty black overcoat despite its sodden state. The trousers were more ragged than when Hannah and her teachers had seen them earlier. Oblivious to his state, the derelict clutched his bottle, staggered and fell to his knees as he entered the seaward end of Jubilee Street.
Coarse laughter echoed around the four storey terrace of superficially elegant houses. Daylight would have revealed rotting wood and peeling paint on the graceful eighteenth century facades; roofs dipping alarmingly in their centres, and more windows shored with wood than glass. But the drunk was in no state to look at his surroundings. He was only aware that he was in the vicinity of what he called “home”. The grand town houses built on the wealth of merchant shipping, were in the final throes of decay. The few still habitable had been leased by the council to the churches and voluntary organisations who struggled to house the town’s homeless.
The drunk’s bottle rolled from his grasp. A man walked up behind him and retrieved it. The drunk looked up.
‘Got change to spare, mate?’
‘Have this one on me.’ The stranger handed him a fresh bottle.
The drunk unscrewed the top and drank deeply.
‘Good stuff,’ was the only intelligible sound he uttered as the unaccustomed warmth of whisky flowed down his throat. ‘You’re a good mate. One of the best – bloody good –’
‘Let’s get you behind this hoarding and out of the worst of the rain.’
‘Too bloody soft, that’s your trouble. Haven’t been on the road long enough. It’s sheltered enough out here.’ The tone had become contentious. The man who offered the bottle grew wary. He knew what men who lived on the streets were capable of.
‘For you perhaps,’ he said quietly. ‘But you’ve half a bottle inside you.’
‘You complaining I’ve taken too much of your booze?’ The drunk tried and failed to focus as he handed the bottle back. He attempted to sit up, lost momentum and fell backwards, sprawling on the fouled pavement.
‘I gave it to you because I want you to have it,’
his companion explained. ‘But we’re in the open.
You know what the others are like. One whiff of that bottle and it’ll be gone.’
‘I’ll look after it.’ The voice slowed as the fuddled mind digested the gravity of the threat.
‘Up you get.’ A hand gripped the back of the dirty coat. The sharp sound of tearing cloth echoed around the street but the drunk managed to remain on his feet – just – and only with help. Tottering close to the man who had given him the bottle, he reeked of the fetid, sour filth he’d lived and slept in all winter.
‘One more step.’
The drunk fell headlong behind a hoarding advertising a lager that would, if the picture could be believed, attract young, voluptuous females.
Rolling over he held up his arms.
‘More!’ he begged.
The whisky bottle again changed hands.
‘Good stuff –’ the bottle fell from his fingers.
His companion watched it roll over the rough ground until it clattered to rest against a lump of concrete. The contents gurgled into a puddle, mixing with the rainwater.
The man looked up and down Jubilee Street. It was deserted, just as he’d hoped it would be. The hostels for the homeless closed their doors early.
They had to because the demand for beds greatly exceeded the supply. Anyone who’d lived on the streets for any length of time knew there was nothing for them in Jubilee Street at this hour.
Queues started forming at five o’clock. The Salvation Army and lay charity hostels were invariably full before six, the Catholic one, which was fighting a losing battle against lice and fleas, a little later. At eight the police came down and moved the stragglers on. But despite the intermittent police presence, few wandered among its precincts after dark. And tonight was no exception.
The pavements shone dull, grey satin except where potholes had been filled with gleaming black puddles. Rain continued to fall, soft and silent. No footstep, no whine of a car engine disturbed the silence. Lights burned in the ground floor windows of the hostels, but no sound came from them.
The man stared dispassionately at the drunk lying at his feet. Eyes closed, legs spread wide apart, a snore ripped noisily from his throat. He was dead to the world. A smile creased his companion’s face as he thought of the old adage.
He slung the bag he was carrying on to the ground. Opening it, he removed a plastic bottle of clear liquid, a tin gallon can and a hunting knife with a six inch hooked blade. Time to set to work.
Father Sam Mayberry, who’d been working late on the Catholic hostel’s account books, heard the scream. A piercing, bestial cry of pure agony. It took him precious minutes to unbar the front door.
The first thing he saw were the flames soaring behind the hoarding. As he ran closer, crying out for someone to call the fire-brigade, he saw the dark shape in the centre. It ceased screaming moments after he reached it.
When the telephone rang, it came almost as a relief.
Lyn picked it up. She looked across the room to where Trevor was talking to Anna and Peter. He must have had a few, not to have even heard it.
‘Lyn, is Trevor there?’
She recognised the lilting tones of Trevor’s superior’s Welsh accent.
‘I’ll get him for you, Dan.’
‘I’m sorry, but –’
‘It’s all right,’ she interrupted the inspector. The first thing she’d learned as the live-in girlfriend of a police officer was that “but” meant cancelled plans.
As one disgruntled wife had complained to her at the police ball, even funerals, marriages and births –
especially births – came second to police emergencies.
‘I’m sorry, Lyn.’ Trevor slid his arms into the sleeves of his quilted anorak. Anna was already outside in the car the inspector had sent to pick them up.
‘Stop apologising. I expected it.’ Lyn stood back as the door to the living room opened.
‘But you’ve gone to all this trouble…’
‘Don’t worry, mate. We’ll enjoy ourselves without you.’ Peter stood in the doorway a drink in one hand, a cigar in the other.
‘I’ve no doubt you will.’