Cold Light

Forty-four

As if it weren’t enough of a liability being born black, her parents had to christen her Sharon. One of the few names in current English instantly recognized as a term of abuse. “Don’t want to waste your time with her, right little Sharon!” In addition to all the innuendo and insinuation she’d grown up with from childhood, to say nothing of the outright bigotry, the head-on insults-“Black scrubber! Black cow! Black bastard!”-for the past five years she had been the butt of Essex girl jokes too numerous to mention. The fact that there was no resemblance whatsoever to this mythical blonde in a shell suit with breasts where her brains should be seemed to make little difference. It was all in the name. It could have been worse, she sometimes consoled herself, she could have been Tracey.

Sharon Garnett was thirty-six and had been a police officer for seven years. She had trained as an actress, two years at the Poor School, worked with theater companies, mostly black, doing community work on a succession of shoe-string grants; two small parts in TV soaps, the obligatory black face with a heart of gold. A friend had made a thirty-minute video for Channel 4 with Sharon in the lead and for five or ten minutes it had looked as if her career might be about to take off. Six months later she was back in a transit van, touring a piece about women’s rights from an abandoned hospital in Holloway to a youth center in Cowdenbeath. And she was pregnant.

It was a long story: she lost that baby, sat at home in her parents’ Hackney flat, day after day, not speaking to anyone, staring at the walls. One afternoon, between three and four, the sun shining and even Hackney looking like a place you might want to live-she remembered it well, right down to the smallest detail-Sharon went into her local nick and asked for an application form.

“Open arms where you’re concerned,” the sergeant had said, “racial minorities, you’re actual flavor of the month.”

Despite the occasional remark, the groups that grew silent and closed circle as she entered the room, the excrement-filled envelope with “Eat Me” stenciled on the front found one day in her locker, Sharon’s training passed pretty much without incident.

Surprise, surprise, her first posting was Brixton, policing the front line. Out on the streets with her black woman’s face and shiny uniform, she exemplified the ways in which the Met was changing; black men called her whore and her sisters spat at her feet as she passed.

Three applications for detective were turned down; finally, back to Hackney with the domestic violence unit, but that wasn’t what she wanted. She had done her share of caring and consciousness raising already; if she’d wanted to be a social worker, Sharon told her inspector, she would never have applied to join the police.

Fine: back on the beat.

Eighteen months on, a relationship splintering around her, she left London, joined the Lincoln CID; nice, quiet cathedral city, Sharon as out of place as papaya in a Trust House Forte fruit salad. Oh, there was burglary and plenty of it-the recession bit deep here, too-drug-dealing in a minor kind of way, anything and everything you could imagine to do with cars as long as they were other people’s. The most excitement Sharon had was when a small-scale row about shoplifting on a prewar council estate suddenly flared into a riot: youths throwing petrol bombs and insults, ten-year-olds hurling stones as the police retreated, outnumbered, behind their shields. It had taken reinforcements from outside the area and the arrival of a specialist support unit to regain control.

Since then she’d been seconded to King’s Lynn. Even quieter.

It was quiet now, thirty minutes shy of sunrise, frost heavy across the hawthorn and the oak, the dark ridges of ploughed fields. Sharon was hunkered down behind an ancient Massey-Ferguson tractor, with two of the other officers, passing back and forth a thermos of coffee unofficially laced with Famous Grouse. The coffee was hot and their breath, dove-gray in the clearing air, testified to the cold. She drank sparingly and passed it on; last thing she wanted to do, crawl off somewhere and squat down for a pee, difficult enough without wearing tights over her tights the way she was that morning.

“They’ll never bloody show,” one of her colleagues said. “Not at this rate.”

Sharon shook her head. “They’ll show.”

She had been working this investigation for five months now, ever since the first incident had been reported, seven pigs slaughtered on a farm this side of Louth, dragged off and butchered in the waiting van. Market stalls the length and breadth of Kesteven had flourished special offers of pork belly, legs, chump chops.

“Times like these,” Sharon’s governor said, “people do what they can.”

She supposed it was true: reports of sheep rustling on Dartmoor and in the Lakes had tripled in the past two years.

“Look! There!”

Her heart began to pump. Headlights, dull in the slow-gathering light, steered between the intervening trees. Sharon spoke into the radio clipped to the shoulder of her padded jacket, instructions that were concise and clear.

“Good luck,” somebody said as he moved swiftly past her.

The breath inside Sharon’s body threatened to stop. The lights were clearer now, funneling closer, the van shifting out of silhouette against the slowly lightening sky. Resting on one knee, the other leg braced and ready, Sharon’s mouth ran dry. Over by the sheds, a few of the animals moved around morosely, rooting at what remained of the straw that had been thrown on to the frozen ground.

The skin beneath her hair tingled as the van slowed and slowed again. Before it had come to a halt, three men jumped out, dark anoraks, black jeans, something bright in one of their hands catching what little light there was.

“Wait for it,” Sharon breathed. “For fuck’s sake, wait!”

Two of the men launched themselves at the nearest pig, one seeking to club it hard behind the head. The animal squealed, terrified, and slithered as the club came down again. Running to join them, the driver of the van lost his footing and went sprawling, longbladed knife jarred free from his hand.

“Go!” Sharon called, sprinting forward. “Go! Go! Go!”

“Police!” The shouts sang out around them. “Police! Police!”

Sharon jumped at the man who had already gone down, the heel of her trainer driving into his back and flattening him again into the ground. Satisfied, she carried on running, leaving whoever was in her wake to wield the handcuffs, drag the man away. The hardwood stave that had been used as a club lay in her path and, without stopping, she scooped it up.

Angry voices tore around her, curses and the sharpening clamor of the pigs. One of the thieves broke free and took off in a run towards the van. Sharon watched as two of her colleagues set off in pursuit, feet catching in the ruts that rose like frozen waves from the ground. Two of the others were involved in scuffles, while a third was already on his knees, head yanked backwards with a choke-hold tight about his neck.

The runner had managed to start the van and now it lurched towards them, one of the officers hanging from the side, an arm through the window, grabbing at the wheel. Sharon jumped back as the vehicle slewed round and stuck, the driver’s foot on the accelerator serving only to dig deep into the ground, showering black earth high into the air. A fist landed on his temple and a cuff secured him to the wheel as the ignition cut off.

“Sharon!”

A warning turned her fast, pulling back her head to evade the butcher’s cleaver swinging for her face.

“Nasty,” Sharon said, and struck out with the club, catching her attacker’s elbow as the arm came back, hard enough to break the bone.

Only when their prisoners had been properly cautioned, farmed out into different vehicles for the drive back to Lincoln, the sun showing at last, faint through the horizon of sparse trees, did Sharon wander back across the churned-up ground to where the pigs were rooting eagerly. It took no time at all for her to realize what was at the center of their attention was a human hand.