Shadows. Paul Finch

her breath.

      She could ride this complication out; she knew she could. But it undeniably put a dampener on things. Why the hell did it have to be him?

      ‘Now, stranger,’ Lucy’s mother said from over the counter at the Saltbridge MiniMart.

      Cora Clayburn was fifty-four now, and since her long fair hair had finally started running to silver, she had begun cutting it to shoulder-length. She was still a handsome woman, though – Lucy remembered her as a stunner in her younger days; she could even make the unflattering blue smock and heavy plastic ‘Assistant Manager’ tag look good.

      ‘Thought I could take you for lunch,’ Lucy said.

      ‘Ooh, had a pay rise or something?’

      ‘No, it’s just …’ Lucy shrugged. ‘You know.’

      Cora eyed her suspiciously, sensing something untoward. It was always the same; Lucy had once successfully lied her way into the inner sanctum of the two most dangerous female gangsters in Manchester, but she could never fool her own mum.

      ‘You trying to bribe me?’ Cora wondered.

      ‘It’s not really a bribe.’

      ‘But there’s something you need to tell me and you want to sweeten the pill?’

      ‘Mum …’ Lucy tried her most plaintive voice. ‘I don’t live with you anymore, so you wouldn’t have known about this otherwise, but I don’t like hiding things from you.’

      ‘Hmm.’ Cora busied herself along the counter. ‘Let me guess … you’re off on another suicide mission.’

      ‘It’s not a suicide mission. It’s just undercover work.’

      Cora pointedly said nothing. Neither of them needed reminding how badly Lucy had been injured and frightened the previous time she’d gone undercover.

      ‘But it’s going to be nothing like last time,’ Lucy added hastily. That was completely true, but she didn’t bother to explain that, whereas last time she’d been standing with those suspected of committing violent crime, this time it would be the other way around – she’d be out there with the prospective victims of it. ‘It’s with the Robbery Squad. Which means I’ll have big, hard blokes with me at all times. Plus, it’s here in Crowley … it’s only round the corner.’

      Cora didn’t look mollified, but she didn’t raise any further objections.

      It had never been the case that Lucy and her mother ‘didn’t get on’. Cora, a single parent living in Saltbridge, one of the older terraced districts in the town, which had suffered deprivation even into the twenty-first century, had raised her daughter alone, and with the odd exception of a few ‘wild child’ phases during Lucy’s youth, had turned her at length into a model citizen. However, Lucy’s joining law enforcement at the age of twenty had been a bone of contention between them, which had persisted for the last ten years. It was not that Cora disliked the police per se, but she considered that she’d seen some terrible things in her time – she knew ‘what went on’, as she was fond of saying. And every time her daughter climbed into her uniform, or now, as it was, plain clothes, she feared that something awful was going to happen. But, these days at least, these were concerns that Cora only paid lip service to, which Lucy took as a sign that she was at last getting used to the fact that her daughter was a copper for life.

      Lucy left her Jimny in the MiniMart car park, and they walked together across the road to the Wagon & Horses pub, which, though popular with both factory and office workers at lunchtime, usually had a couple of tables spare. Today was no exception.

      Cora ordered tagliatelle, Lucy a small portion of salad with poached salmon.

      ‘You eat like a rabbit,’ Cora said disapprovingly. ‘I don’t know where you get the energy from to do your job.’

      ‘Don’t like filling myself up at lunch,’ Lucy replied. ‘Makes me sleepy in the afternoon.’

      ‘Does that matter … if you’re working funny hours again?’

      On reflection, Lucy supposed it didn’t, given that she was mainly going to be on nights. It would probably help if she could get some kind of shut-eye today, even if it was only short-lived. But she still wasn’t hungry, and that was probably down to the excitement of her forthcoming assignment.

      ‘I just didn’t inherit your miraculous metabolism, Mum, that’s all,’ Lucy replied.

      Cora gave a sweet smile. Before spotting someone she knew across the pub, and waving.

      ‘All right, Cora … looking gorgeous today, as always!’ a burly builder shouted as he and his mate trundled across to the exit in their dingy overalls and heavy, dust-caked boots.

      ‘That Jimmy Ogden?’ Lucy said after he’d gone. ‘Now … he has put weight on.’

      ‘And he probably puts in a tougher day’s shift than the two of us together,’ Cora replied. ‘Just goes to show … we’re all different, lovie.’ She leaned across the table and playfully patted Lucy’s cheek. ‘So don’t feel inadequate.’

      ‘Get out of it,’ Lucy chuckled.

      They continued in this fashion for the remainder of the meal, enjoying each other’s company, easily and idly avoiding any risqué subjects. Until inevitably, almost unavoidably, Lucy sat back, dabbed her lips with a napkin and, after the barmaid had taken their empty dishes away, asked: ‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from him, have you? He’s not tried to contact you?’

      Cora looked unperturbed by the question. She wore her readers as she perused the sweets menu. ‘Not at all. He said he wouldn’t, didn’t he?’

      ‘And he’s the kind of guy who keeps his promises?’

      ‘He kept them for thirty-odd years, love.’

      And that, from her tone, was the end of this particular matter.

      The ‘he’ in question was Lucy’s estranged father, who in so many ways signified a distant but dark past that still haunted and embarrassed her. Long before Lucy was born, Cora went through a wild child phase of her own, leaving her family home under such a cloud that she’d never speak to her parents again, and finally earning a living by performing nightly at a strip-club called SugaBabes on the other side of Manchester. She’d only been in her late teens at the time, and had been easily smitten by a handsome bouncer at the club, with whom she’d commenced a romantic relationship. However, when she unexpectedly fell pregnant with Lucy, she re-evaluated everything, and drew the conclusion that these underworld figures with whom she was increasingly involved could never be part of her daughter’s life. She thus packed the stripper job in, broke it off with her boyfriend, who was surprisingly amicable about it – most likely because he could (and did) take his pick of the rest of the girls there – and crossed the city to commence a new, more respectable life. In time, the ex-boyfriend, as he rose through the ranks of the mob, doing worse and worse things and yet reaping ever greater benefits, contacted Cora again, offering financial assistance in the raising of their daughter. But Cora, always an independent soul, continually resisted. In due course, she lost touch with him altogether … until last year, when unusual circumstances brought him back into both her and her daughter’s lives with shattering force.

      It was a particularly horrific experience for Lucy, learning that her father was a villain. She’d grown up with the lie that her real dad had been a cheeky-chappie bus driver who’d abandoned them both because he couldn’t face the responsibility of parenthood. Of course, it didn’t make it any better that she was now a police officer; in fact, it made things a whole lot worse. If word of this revelation had got out, both father and daughter would find their respective careers imperilled. As such, they’d agreed to keep it quiet, and even now only a very tight circle of select acquaintances knew the truth.

      Not that this prevented Lucy losing sleep from time to time.

      Against