7
9 January | Five Months Earlier
Healy entered the office, the traces of old Christmas decorations still hanging limply from whiteboards and computer monitors, and headed for his desk at the back of the room. In the two months he’d been off, it had been used as a dumping ground: printouts, files, random stationery and magazines made up a landslide of discarded items. Cups from the machine had been stacked up in towers as well, one after the other along the edge of the desk. In places, they’d obviously been knocked over and the coffee never cleared up: sticky residue formed in pools, and there were marks on the carpet where it had run off.
The only thing that hadn’t been touched were his photos, pinned to the wall on the left of his desk. There were five: individual shots of his wife and three kids, and then a picture of all of them, in happier times, on a holiday in Majorca. He sat down at the desk and wheeled in closer to the photos, his eyes falling on Leanne. Something tremored in his throat, like a bassline coming up from his chest, and he turned away from her before the emotion could take hold.
He started to clean up, sweeping everything on his desk off into a bin, and then grabbed a dishcloth from the kitchen area and rubbed off the coffee stains. About ten minutes later, at just gone 6 a.m., he looked up to see two men enter the office, laughing at something one of them had said. When their eyes locked on Healy, they briefly stopped – frozen for a moment – and then they tried to disguise the movement by continuing their conversation. They all knew each other – the two men were Richter and Sallows – but the division inside CID would be something he’d have to live with: some of them understood why he’d done what he did, the road he’d walked and the laws he’d broken; others only saw him as reckless. A man that couldn’t be trusted.
About twenty minutes later, his desk clean and his computer on, he saw someone coming towards him out of the corner of his eye. The office was busy now. He’d had a short conversation with a couple of detectives – a guy called Frey who had joined in the time he’d been off, and who told him he was sorry about Leanne; the other a cop called Sampson who he’d known professionally since they’d first got their uniforms – but mostly it had been nods of the head, or just a complete blank. People hadn’t been openly hostile so far, but as he turned to see who was approaching, he knew that was about to change.
‘Watch out,’ a voice said, ‘it’s the Return of the Living Dead.’
There were a couple of titters from elsewhere in the room. Healy looked out and saw Richter and Sallows smiling as Eddie Davidson stepped in closer.
‘How you doing, Eddie?’ Healy asked. He didn’t make eye contact, just fiddled around with the things on his desk: straightening, adjusting, tidying, trying to defuse the situation. Davidson was a DS in his early fifties, podgy and aggressive, with small dark eyes, thick black hair and an unruly beard. He had always been the worst-dressed detective on the force, and Healy noted that he hadn’t disappointed today: too-tight jeans, a red T-shirt with some kind of road-sign motif on it, and a leather jacket which he’d zipped up as far as it would go, which wasn’t very far: his belly was a big round mass.
Davidson was a decent cop: not the best, not the worst, but good enough. What he definitely was, though, was a zealous believer in the religion of the police force, which was why he hated Healy. Healy had gone against the religion and moved against his own. There was some added bad blood too: in a moment of desperation, as he’d searched hopelessly in the shadows for the man who’d taken his daughter, Healy had pulled a gun on Davidson.
‘How’s it feel to be back?’ Davidson asked.
‘It feels good.’
‘Yeah?’
The whole office stopped, some covertly eyeing the two of them, some fully turned around in their seats. Healy looked up. ‘Yeah, it feels good.’
‘You screwed up yet?’
Healy felt the first pulse of anger rise in his throat, and then pushed it back down again. Movement registered with Davidson – the tightness in Healy’s neck, the tension in his muscles – and he realized he’d got to Healy; picked at a wound and made it bleed. He looked out to the rest of the office, like he was working the crowd, and then shuffled in even closer. Healy glanced at him. ‘Was there something else, Eddie?’
Davidson smirked. ‘Is that a f*cking joke? You walk in here after two months and ask me that? Do you even remember what you did?’
Healy looked at him again. ‘I remember.’
‘You remember waving a gun in my face?’
They stared at each other. Healy didn’t reply this time, but suddenly it felt like the office was closing in. Other detectives stepped closer, the whole room squeezing shut around him. He laid a hand flat to the desk and leaned back in his chair, keeping his eyes fixed on Davidson, but gaining some room to breathe. Davidson noticed, pulled an empty chair in from behind him and wheeled in close to Healy again, so the two of them were almost touching knees.
‘Let me be clear on something,’ he said quietly, ‘just so there’s no grey areas here: no one wants you back, Healy.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind, Eddie.’
‘You do that. Because you can play by the rules, you can pretend nothing ever happened, but the truth is you’re not a cop any more. You’re not one of us, and you never will be. You’re just a snide, back-stabbing piece of shit.’
It took everything he had not to reach across and grab Davidson by the throat. But then, through his peripheral vision, he saw someone else enter the office, pausing in the doorway. A few people noticed, returning to their work.
‘Have we got a problem here?’
They all looked around at DCI Melanie Craw, a tall, slim woman in her forties. She was leaning against the door frame, arms crossed, a resigned expression on her face.
‘No problem, ma’am,’ Davidson said, immediately backing away.
‘What about you, Healy?’
He glanced at her, and then back to Davidson. Davidson, his face out of sight of Craw, was half smiling. ‘No,’ Healy said eventually. ‘There’s no problem.’
That night, as Healy made his way outside to his car, sleet sweeping across the car park, he noticed something wedged in place beneath one of the wipers. He reached forward and removed it, brushing off the moisture.
It was a toy knife.
He looked back at the station and, at one of the windows, he saw movement: there and then gone again. But he got the message. A snide, back-stabbing piece of shit.