Strangers. Paul Finch

houses, Saltbridge was not the most salubrious part of Crowley. Like so many working class neighbourhoods in the post-manufacturing era, it was extensively unemployed, drugs and alcoholism were rife and it suffered higher than normal crime rates. But Cora had lived here all of Lucy’s life at least, a dauntless single mum who’d never once been oppressed or intimidated by the environment in which she’d been forced to raise her child. These days, having held a management position for several years, she could probably afford to move out to the suburbs if she wanted to, but she had friends locally and was comfortable here.

      ‘How long will this assignment last?’ Cora asked.

      ‘As long as it takes. Could be a few months. But don’t worry. I’m not going to be in harm’s way.’

      ‘I bet you thought that last time too. And then look what happened. You were relieved you didn’t lose your job. All that mattered to me was that I didn’t lose my child.’

      Lucy smiled tiredly. It was tempting to retort with the provable fact that uniformed patrol, her current role, was one of the most dangerous jobs a police officer could undertake, and that detectives didn’t encounter violent criminals half as often as bobbies on the beat did. But that would hardly help. Perhaps if Lucy had earned herself some stripes by now, or maybe an inspector’s pips, things would be different. She’d be able to con her mum into thinking that each shift was spent in the hermetically sealed environment of a supervisor’s office, rubber-stamping reports all day. But though Lucy had already passed both her sergeant’s and inspector’s exams, she hadn’t received the call just yet. Positive discrimination was a big thing in the service these days. The top brass were keen to advance the careers of their female underlings, but perhaps not when said underling was the child of a single parent from the wrong side of town – a child who didn’t even know her father, and especially not after that foul-up in Borsdane Wood.

      ‘So you’ll be here this evening when I get home?’ Cora said, opening the back door.

      ‘Certainly will. I’ll have tea ready and waiting.’

      ‘Lovely. That’ll make us square. Your breakfast’s in the oven.’

      ‘Oh cool … I’m starving.’ Lucy pulled on a padded glove and drew out the hotplate, and was delighted to see bacon, eggs, sausage, beans, grilled tomato and toast. ‘Mum! You shouldn’t have gone to this much trouble.’

      ‘I know I shouldn’t, but I have to make it worth your while coming home, don’t I? Otherwise one day you might not.’

      ‘Don’t be silly.’ Lucy kissed her on the forehead. ‘Go on … you’ll be late.’

       Chapter 5

      An executive decision was taken to locate Operation Clearway’s Major Incident Room, or MIR as it was known in the trade, at Robber’s Row. The taskforce took residence on its top two floors, where suites of offices were available which already were well equipped and close to all necessary facilities. The MIR itself was on the lower of these, the station’s fourth floor, where the N Division’s Sports & Social Club had once been: over a hundred square yards of floor-space with a raised stage at one end and a bar at the other, though both of these were now defunct. Robber’s Row was one of the last nicks in GMP with a section-house attached, in other words sleeping quarters for junior officers. Few of these comfortable but basic one-bed domiciles were used any more; in fact most of them would need to be aired out at the very least, but the proximity to the MIR of such a purpose-built bunkhouse was perfect, given that, as promised, nearly half of the two hundred officers attached full time to Clearway had been brought in from outside the GMP area.

      The whole thing would be a home from home for Lucy, who’d worked out of Robber’s Row for the last four years, ever since she’d transferred away from Cotehill Crescent, the sub-divisional nick where she’d been posted until the incident at Borsdane Wood. But the atmosphere would be different in the MIR. A little less formal perhaps, with everyone in civvies and relatively few newbies involved, but with less margin for error than would normally be tolerated. The thought of having Priya Nehwal in command was a little unnerving – she was the best, so she expected the same from her staff. But in truth, she was only one member of the top brass on Operation Clearway, Deputy SIO in fact. According to the bumph circulated by email those first couple of nights, the rest of the senior supervision would comprise Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Cavill, also from GMP’s Serious Crimes Division, who was SIO, and Detective Chief Inspector June Swanson from Merseyside, who was Office Manager. Both of these characters were unknown quantities to Lucy, so it was anyone’s guess what their overall management style would be, but given the general experience of the taskforce, it was to be hoped that it would be pretty relaxed.

      It all started reasonably well that first morning.

      As part of the Intel Unit, as they’d now be referred to, Lucy found her induction briefing on the top floor in what had once been the classroom where the N Division Training Officer had put probationers through their paces. From here on, this would be their base. It was airy and spacious, with rows of neatly arranged tables and chairs, and a large desk and widescreen VDU at the front. It also had a locker room attached and a small anteroom, which the DI running the Intel Unit could make use of as a private office. If nothing else, it was a relief to be in there, given that downstairs it was already a tale of chaos, taskforce detectives doing their level best to work amid the bedlam of delivery guys tramping in and out wheeling desks, filing cabinets and computer equipment, and techies hammering and banging as they installed new electrical fittings. Not that the Intel Unit didn’t feel a little crowded itself. That first day, approximately thirty young female officers were assembled there, mostly seated, while a row of fifteen blokes stood at the back.

      ‘Morning, everyone,’ DI Geoff Slater said from the front. ‘Chuffed to bits to see so many of you here … but if I don’t sound overly excited, apologies in advance. We’ve got a shedload of work ahead of us.’

      Slater was another GMP Serious Crimes Division man, but to Lucy’s eye he looked more like a TV cop. He was somewhere in his late-thirties, tall and lean, but with an air of virility. He had a thatch of unruly black hair and rugged, lived-in looks. His shirt, tie, jacket and trousers were all vaguely rumpled. He didn’t seem especially happy: he wore a serious, rather sullen expression – and yet it all hung together nicely.

      ‘You all know why you’re here and what a ball-acher of a job you’re going to be doing when you’re out there,’ Slater said. ‘Hopefully you all gave deep consideration to this assignment before you stuck your hands up – I hope so at least, otherwise you might find you’re in the wrong place. I’m certainly not going to do you the disservice of trying to sugar-coat this, because that’d be a total waste of time. Likewise, I don’t want to spend time we can’t spare making formal introductions, aside from to introduce myself, which I already have done, and your two immediate line-managers, detective sergeants Sally Bryant from Merseyside and Maureen Clark from Lancashire.’

      Two of the seated women stuck their hands up to indicate who they were.

      ‘You’ll obviously need to get to know each other,’ Slater said, ‘but you can do that on your first tea-break. You’re all wearing name-tags anyway, so that should help and there’re a couple of charts on the wall that you might find useful.’

      Lucy glanced up. Among a mass of other paperwork, mainly maps and photographs with marker-pen notations all over them, there were two colour charts, one for women and one for men, each bearing ordered and neatly blown-up headshots, with essential details like name, rank, collar-number and police force of origin listed underneath. She skimmed through. Several of the women were already serving detectives, though the majority were PCs like herself. The male officers, she’d already learned, had largely been drafted from the Tactical Support Group, which meant they’d most likely be ex-military, which their burly physiques and hard, truculent faces also seemed to imply. Their role was basically to keep an eye on the women, but also to drive up in unmarked cars every so often, posing as customers, so