Left You Dead

12

One of their colleagues on B-Section of the Brighton and Hove Response, who was a bit of a comedian, had once named them Little and Large, and the moniker had stuck. It wasn’t an entirely unjust description. PC Holly Little, who was known to her colleagues as the Pocket Rocket because of her short stature but feisty nature, was always the first to dive head first into a brawl or any other kind of dangerous situation. Her much older colleague, PC John Alldridge, with whom she was regularly partnered, was a six-foot-four, eighteen-stone former rugby forward, known as the Gentle Giant. He had recently transferred back to Uniform from CID because he missed the adrenaline rush of response work and wanted to spend his last couple of years before retirement back where he had started his police career, on Response.

The shift was getting tedious as they cruised the quiet Monday-morning streets of Brighton and Hove in the marked car. At the best of times, this shift was usually uneventful — criminals tended to get up late, even on fine days like this one.

So far, there had only been one shout — a Grade One — responding to an anxious call by a neighbour reporting that the people in the flat next door were killing each other. When they got there, on blues and twos, it had turned out to be a false alarm. The young couple had been happily watching an old Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor film, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which was about marital strife and involved a lot of shouting.

Little and Large had both shaken their heads. It was a sad indictment of modern society that a seemingly healthy and fit young couple could be at home watching movies on a glorious Monday morning. But hey, maybe they were night workers or on holiday, they weren’t to judge.

‘Did you hear what Jonno said the other day?’ Alldridge asked.

Little shook her head. Jonathan — Jonno — Mackie was popular in the force. A plain-clothes cop, six foot two tall and solid with it, not many people wanted to mess with him, and he loved nothing better than to prowl, in the shadows, the city’s crime hot spots.

‘He nicked an Eastern European pickpocket in West Street the other night.’

Holly grinned. ‘Seriously?’

‘Apparently this good, honest citizen was just trying to warn the man that his wallet was sticking out of his back pocket.’

‘Almost as good as my bag-snatcher.’

Alldridge remembered that. Holly had been off duty, drinking with friends in a pub, when she’d seen a man acting shiftily. Minutes later, he had ducked under a table, grabbed a handbag and legged it. She’d chased him for a mile before bringing him to the ground with a rugby tackle. His excuse was, he swore blind that he thought he saw the owner leaving without it, and was running after her to try to catch her up and give it back. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Alldridge was in his twenty-eighth year in the force and, apart from his spell as a detective, always as a uniform PC. Like a number of his colleagues, he’d never wanted promotion, always turning down every opportunity he’d been given — and as a popular and respected officer, he’d been offered plenty. He was happy to be back in uniform again after his time as a DC with Roy Grace’s Major Crime Team, which he had enjoyed. But he loved even more being a front-line copper, where he could sometimes make a real difference to people’s lives.

Over the years he’d seen so many of his mates go up the promotion ladder, getting more and more pay but less and less bang out of the job as they became increasingly desk-bound. His wife worked for a bank on a good salary and, like himself, had a sizeable pension coming, so it wasn’t the higher pay and bigger pension promotion offered that drove him.

They were financially comfortable and he was happy with the career decisions he’d made; the only cloud now looming over the horizon was retirement. Plenty of his mates in the force couldn’t wait for their day and would announce gleefully, ‘Only sixty-two more shifts to go!’, ‘Only seventeen more shifts to go!’ But he wasn’t counting. At the time he’d joined, when you hit thirty years’ service you took your pension and went, making room for younger, supposedly brighter people to fill your shoes. But at forty-eight, he hardly felt like a dinosaur, he relished his experience and still felt fit enough. He was considering whether maybe he would stay on a few more years.

Holly Little drove west along the seafront, while John Alldridge, doing his best as ever to make his massive frame comfortable in the small car, enjoyed the glorious view out over a flat ocean to his left. It was 10.30 a.m. The tide was way out and a few people were on the expanse of mudflats, some walking dogs, along with a couple of lone detectorists sweeping away. A few holidaymakers and local beachgoers were already staking out their claims on the pebbles with their towels, rugs, baskets and folding chairs. Hunkering down for what promised to be a fine day. In Alldridge’s view, September could often be a glorious month, summer’s last throw.

The pair had been on shift since 6 a.m. ‘I’m feeling peckish,’ Alldridge said. Living out of town in Horsham, just over thirty minutes away, he’d been up since 4 a.m., and he guessed his colleague, who lived in Brighton and a lot closer to the police station, must have been up since around 4.30. ‘You?’

She nodded. ‘Did you bring anything in?’

He shook his head.

‘Me neither. What do you fancy? A fry-up?’

‘Shall we try that new place along Church Road?’ he suggested, mindful of his ever-expanding waistband. ‘They do a great veggie one.’

She screwed up her face. ‘Not what I fancy right now.’

He patted his belly. ‘Yeah, nor me. They do proper stuff, too. So, how’s the bambino? How long?’

‘Five,’ she said.

‘Five months to go?’

She nodded — did she look a tad wistful? he wondered.

Alldridge knew that she and her partner had been trying for a baby for over four years, if not longer. ‘How are you two feeling about it?’ he asked as she indicated right and halted at the traffic lights at the bottom of Grand Avenue, beneath the stern statue of Queen Victoria.

‘Pretty excited! Do you remember how you felt when your wife was expecting your first baby, John?’

He nodded. ‘I do. Terrified.’

‘Really?’

‘All the things that could go wrong. The responsibility of bringing a kid into the world — not like something we’d bought from Amazon and could send back if we didn’t like it.’

Holly grinned. ‘But you did like it — her?’

‘Totally, utterly, without reservation. One of the most beautiful moments of my life. I remember thinking as I held Rachel in my arms, her umbilical cord still attached, that I would take a bullet for her. I still feel that — and for both my children. You’ll feel it, too.’

She smiled. ‘I guess — whatever strange world he’s born into.’

‘He? You know the sex?’

The controller’s voice came through their radios, interrupting them. ‘Charlie Romeo Zero Five?’

Alldridge answered. ‘Charlie Romeo Zero Five.’

‘Charlie Romeo Zero Five, we’ve a concerned gentleman whose wife went into Tesco Holmbush at around 3.15 p.m. yesterday and has not been seen since. Normally I’d give this to West Sussex, but they have no units available and the gentleman lives in Hove. Can you attend, Grade Two?’

‘Yes, yes,’ Alldridge answered, and caught the ‘sad face’ grimace of his colleague. She would have preferred a Grade One, when she could have put on the blue lights and siren — one of the big bangs all response officers got from the job.

He punched the address the controller gave him into the satnav, then they both listened to the details she had for them as they headed towards Nevill Road.

Seventeen minutes later, Alldridge radioed the controller to confirm they were at the address. Was there any update? he asked.

There wasn’t. That was the end of the controller’s role in this incident and they now held the baton.