Gone

36

The Underwater Search Unit was trained for general support work and for specialist searches. Its responsibilities towards finding Martha Bradley ended there. So, with the disastrous canal search completed, the offices at Almondsbury outside Bristol slipped back to their routine business and PC Wellard at last found time to do the computer-based diversity training each officer was required to complete. A two-day course of sitting in front of a screen clicking buttons to say, yes, he understood it was wrong to judge, wrong to discriminate. When Flea arrived he was in a room off the main office, staring grumpily at the screen. She knew not to speak about yesterday at the canal. She put her head round the door and smiled. Pretended it hadn’t happened. ‘Afternoon.’

He held up a hand to acknowledge her. ‘’Ternoon.’

‘How’s it going?’

‘Just about getting there. I think it’s working. You won’t catch me calling a nigger a nigger any more.’

‘Jesus, Wellard. For crying out loud.’

He held both hands up. Surrender. ‘I’m sorry, Sarge, but this is an insult. Being taught to do the things that’re supposed to come naturally? Even the black guys on the force – sorry, the British individuals of Afro-Caribbean descent – think it’s an insult. The decent human beings in the force don’t need to be taught this shit, and the bastards who do need to be told it just tick the boxes, smile and say the right thing. Then they’re off to their BNP meetings, shaving their heads and getting the George Cross tattooed where the sun don’t shine.’

She took a deep breath. Wellard was hard-working, uncomplaining and totally colour-blind, loved every guy in the team as much as the next. He of all people didn’t need this training. He was right. It was an insult to people like him. But there were others who needed it rammed home.

‘I can’t get into this, Wellard. You know that.’

‘Yeah – and that’s what’s wrong with the world. No one will say it. It’s bloody McCarthyism all over again.’

‘I don’t give a stuff about McCarthyism, Wellard. Just finish the sodding thing. You only have to tick the right bloody boxes. A trained seal could do it.’

He returned to clicking around the screen. Flea closed the door and went to her desk, where she sat, gazing blankly through the open door into the locker room, trying for the hundredth time to focus on the idea sitting just out of her line of vision.

A Christmas card was taped to one of the lockers, the first, as solitary and naked as a January snowdrop. Everything else – the boots on the rack in the corner, the noticeboard with all the filthy postcards and stupid cartoons – had been there for months. Years. They’d been there when Thom had run Misty over – she was sure of that because she remembered sitting in exactly this place trying to work out what the rotten-meat stench was. She hadn’t known at the time that it was coming from her own car parked outside. That the smell of decomposing flesh in the boot was being carried into the building by the air-conditioning system.

Air-conditioning. She drummed her fingers on the table. Airconditioning. She felt the electromagnetic field crackle around her skull and her neck, pushing goosebumps up on her arms. What alarms were kicking off in the back of her head? The exchange of gas. The replacement of old air for new. She thought of where Misty was now: the way the air made its way up from the cave deep in the rock, along unseen passages, tiny crevices no wider than a finger, and out, out, out into the open.

And then, in a rush, it came to her. She stood and pulled out her project file, a loose-leaf folder full of all the things that needed doing in the unit day after day, leafed quickly through it until she found the notes from the search yesterday. Shakily she pulled them out, spread them on the desk and stood with her hands on the table, poring over them, the whole thing slotting into place in her head.

Air shafts. That’s what she’d been missing. The fucking air shafts.

Someone knocked at the door.

‘Yes?’ Half guiltily she shovelled the paper back into the file, turned her back to the desk. ‘What?’

Wellard appeared. He was holding a pad with a message written on it in his untidy handwriting. ‘Sarge?’

‘Yes, Wellard.’ She leaned back on the desk to hide the file. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Got a job. Just got the call.’

‘What sort of job?’

‘Arrest warrant.’

‘Who are we supposed to be arresting?’

‘Don’t know. They told us to expedite our journey to the RV point. No firearms coding, but sounds pretty hefty all the same.’

She looked at him steadily. ‘You do it, Wellard, you act up for me. I’m taking the afternoon off.’

Wellard always stepped in as acting sergeant when she couldn’t be there but usually a handover would be scheduled in advance. He frowned. ‘You’re rostered for today.’

‘I’m ill. I’ll self-certify.’

‘You’re not ill.’ He looked at her suspiciously. ‘Hey. It’s not ’cos of what I said, is it? You know, when I said you won’t catch me calling a n—’

She held up a hand to stop him, her heart racing. ‘Thank you, Wellard. No. That’s not why.’

‘Then, what?’

If she told him the way her mind was careening along he’d lose it with her. He’d tell her she was obsessed and that she should let it go. He’d make fun of her or, worse, threaten to tell the inspector. Or give her a lecture. Or even try to come with her. Anyway. She’d be fine. Nothing was going to happen. ‘Because I’m sick. Swine flu – whatever looks good on the forms. I’m going home now to put my feet up.’ She bundled the file into her rucksack and swung it over her shoulders, straightened and gave Wellard a bright smile. ‘Good luck with the arrest. Don’t forget to put in for the acting’s allowance.’