chapter Seven
Constable Dex had a busy Monday morning. First up, he did some paperwork in the station, and then helped out with a call in town from a woman complaining that the guy she’d taken a restraining order out on was bothering her. The woman didn’t want to press charges, so he gave the guy a talking to and let him off with a warning, thinking as he watched the man slouch away how difficult it was sometimes to let someone go, how hard it was to move on.
Then at ten, as the schools’ liaison officer, he had a training session with a bunch of kids from the local primary school who’d volunteered as road crossing patrol before and after school. He spent a while showing them how to fit the pole of the metal safety barrier into the slot—which proved a more difficult task than he’d expected—then walked them through the process of looking both ways and waiting for an empty road before saying, “Signs out, check, walk now!” As usual, the girls were a lot more switched on than the boys, who only wanted to do the practice so they could get out of their science lessons.
He found himself wondering as the kids marched back and forth across the road if his and Honey’s first child would be a boy or a girl. What would he rather have? Of course the correct answer was that it didn’t matter as long as the child was healthy, but in truth he longed for a son. It may have been incredibly old fashioned, but he wanted an heir, a child to carry on his name, a boy he could show how to play rugby, take fishing, teach how to dive.
Then again, boys were hard work when they became teenagers, he thought as he walked across the road to the high school, the training complete. He’d seen so many cases of fathers and sons butting heads once the hormones kicked in, when the boys’ natural urge to challenge and declare themselves the alpha male took over. How would he deal with that?
He checked in at reception and made his way down to the careers block. The careers advisor had invited him in to give a talk to senior students interested in joining the police force. He smiled as the woman came out of the classroom to welcome him. They talked for five minutes while the students filtered in, around two dozen in all, and then he joined her at the front of the class while she introduced him.
“This is Constable Concannon,” she said. “He’s going to chat to you about how he joined the force, and then you can ask him questions.” She smiled and gestured for him to start.
Dex cleared his throat and perched on one of the tables as he began speaking. There were more boys than girls, and over half the boys were Maori. He knew the ratio of white students in the school to Maori students was around five to one, and although the school had implemented special initiatives to raise Maori achievement, generally he would have named Maori boys as the demographic least likely to want to enter the force. In fact to his surprise he recognised several of the boys from previous encounters—two had been brought in for theft and one for suspected marijuana dealing, although they hadn’t been able to pin anything on him.
He spoke for a while about training programmes and salaries and possibilities for promotion, but it was warm outside and the class fidgeted, and he sensed he wasn’t saying the right things. He stopped talking, unbuttoned his police jacket and took off his hat.
“Why are you here?” he asked the nearest boy, the one who’d been suspected of marijuana dealing.
The boy glared at him. “I’ve as much right to be here as anyone else.”
“I wasn’t suggesting otherwise,” Dex said wryly. “What I meant is, why are you interested in joining the force?”
The boy glanced across at his mate, who smirked.
Dex’s heart sank, but he made himself smile. “I see. Missing science are we?”
“Phys Ed,” said one of the boys. “Too hot to run around.”
Dex glanced at the others.
“English,” a couple said guiltily. “Geography,” said another. A few others insisted they really were interested in joining, but he suspected it was more out of politeness than anything.
“Okay,” he said. “So let me ask you something else. Why aren’t you interested in joining?”
The boy nearest him shrugged. “They won’t want me. They just want white fellas.”
“Well that’s rubbish for a start,” Dex said. “We run special programmes to encourage young Maori men and women like yourselves to join, and I know half a dozen great Maori officers.”
The boy shrugged again. “They won’t want me. I’ve been in trouble.”
Dex hesitated. He didn’t talk much about his past. He’d had to declare it when he applied to the Force, of course, and without the support of his mentor, he didn’t think he’d have made it through the interviews. And of course Honey knew, and therefore probably did most of her family, although they’d never mentioned it. But he never spoke about it to his friends, maybe because he was worried of their reaction—that they’d treat him differently if they knew.
But he was here to reach out to these young men and women. And how could he do that if he didn’t tell it like it was?
“You want to know why I joined?” he asked.
The boy shrugged, but a flicker of interest crossed his features.
Dex tried not to look at the teacher listening intently to one side of the classroom. “I got into trouble when I was sixteen.”
They all stared at him.
“What kind of trouble?” asked the boy in front of him.
“Theft.” Dex cleared his throat. Then he sighed. What did it matter? It was all in the past. “I come from Wellington. My parents separated when I was eight and my mum moved back to England, where she was born. My two brothers and I lived with my dad. All he wanted was for us to be quiet around the house and help out with his painting business at the weekend. He didn’t really care how we did at school—he never came to parents’ evenings or read our reports or anything.”
A couple of the boys nodded, clearly associating with that image.
“I didn’t do well at school,” he continued. “I was fairly bright, but I couldn’t see the point in bothering. I was never going to go to university—we didn’t have the money and, well, there was no encouragement. I knew I’d never be a lawyer or a doctor. I knew I’d probably end up working for my dad, maybe one day run the business with him.”
“Yeah,” said one of the boys, “teachers are always going on about university but my folks aren’t never gonna have that kind of money, so why bother?”
“That’s what I thought,” Dex said, hoping the teacher wasn’t sending him daggers. “So I never did homework, and I hung around with other kids who didn’t work either. Mostly friends of my brothers—older boys. Did graffiti. Got into fights. Drank. Smoked a lot of weed.” He could almost feel the teacher’s eyes on his back, but he ignored her. For the first time, all the kids in the room were engaged.
“It started with shoplifting,” he carried on. “The older guys would dare me to take stuff, and I did it because I wanted to impress them, plus I never had pocket money, and it was a way to get sweets and stuff for free.” A couple of guilty looks flashed around the classroom. Yeah, he’d suspected as much.
“I left school at sixteen, before taking any qualifications. Did a couple of odd jobs. Continued to hang around with the boys because there was nothing else to do at night. Couldn’t afford to take a girl out, unless I stole money, which I did occasionally, from my dad as well as from shops.” He didn’t tell them about how he’d slept around, got into worse fights—how he’d sunk farther and farther into a dark pit of despair where in the end he barely thought himself worthy of any happiness—barely cared whether he lived or died.
“Then, one night I got pressured into joining in with a theft on a house. A rich guy, an accountant or something. One of the guys knew he was away on business, and apparently he had all this technology in his home, widescreen TVs, Playstations, X-Boxes, phones, you name it. So we broke in.”
He paused. The students stared at him, wide-eyed. His lips twisted as he remembered the anticipation that had turned to panic and then fear. “We didn’t know that not only was the house alarmed, it was linked to a security firm, and they called the police. I’d always wanted a Playstation, and the guy had two—two! One in the bedroom and one in the living room, as well as an X-Box. It seemed unfair—why should he have all these things when I didn’t have anything? So I took one. Climbed out of the window and ran off—straight into a policeman.”
“Shit,” said one of the boys, earning himself a scolding from the teacher.
But Dex just laughed. “Yeah.”
“What happened to you? Did you go to prison?”
He shook his head. “I was sixteen. And stupid. And incredibly lucky. Because the policeman I ran into was part of a programme that helped boys like me, and he recognised that I hated what I’d sunk to. That I knew I could be better if only I could climb out of the pit, you know?”
The Maori boy met his eyes for a moment before he dropped his gaze. Yes, he knew.
“So what happened?” asked the girl.
“The policeman talked me into joining the programme. He was the same age as my dad, but he seemed to care, where my dad didn’t. He listened when I talked. And when I said I wanted to change, he believed me.” As Dex thought about Charlie Randall, his throat tightened. Charlie had been the sole reason for Dex turning his life around. His sudden, shocking death from a heart attack two years before had been the reason Dex had decided to leave Wellington behind and start again.
Dex continued, “He talked to me about getting fit—about eating healthily and exercising, things I’d never been told before. I worked hard, lost twenty pounds, ran every day, joined several sports clubs, and grew fit and strong. I went back to school and got my level one literacy and numeracy. And then Charlie suggested I apply for the Police Force. I didn’t think I stood a chance, but he organised my referees, told me what to expect and encouraged me, and to my amazement, I got in.”
Of course that wasn’t the whole story. There were the gruelling interviews, the years of training, of self-doubt, of having to prove himself, of being tempted by his old life, and of having to fight to break away completely from the chains of the past that kept drawing him back. But it was a start.
He glanced around the room, taking them all in. “I’m not saying it’s easy. You have to work at it—nobody’s going to give you anything in this life. But what I am saying is that there’s always a way out. And if you want something badly enough, you shouldn’t use your past, or your family, or your social status or your race or your sex or anything as an excuse, because you’re more than all those things. You’re better than that.”
He was talking too much. He ran a hand through his hair and hoped he wasn’t blushing. “Okay, enough from me. Any questions?”
Every student in the class lifted a hand.
***
Half an hour later, he left the classroom and walked back through the school and across the road, feeling light of spirit. He hoped he hadn’t come across as preachy. He certainly hadn’t meant to sound like that. He’d just wanted to pass on his absolute conviction that you had to take control of your own life. He’d done it, Honey had done it—they’d both overcome some terrible trials and tribulations to get where they were. But perhaps life was all the sweeter for it.
Thinking of sweetness made him think of his fiancée, and thinking of Honey made him smile. He put on his hat, reminding himself to bring it with him on Saturday to the hotel for the wedding. She wanted him to wear it on the honeymoon, and he had every intention of doing whatever she desired in bed.
He wondered how she’d got on at the courthouse. If she hadn’t been chosen, she should have been home by now, and he was surprised he hadn’t heard from her. On impulse, he took out his phone and sent her a quick text message.
As he clipped his phone shut, his gaze fell on a woman leaning against his car. Arms folded, she watched his approach, her posture calm, as if she’d expected him. Her long hair fell about her shoulders in soft brown waves, and she wore a tiny pair of denim shorts and a skimpy white top that emphasised her fantastic figure. She licked her lips as he approached, and pushed herself off the car, saying, “Hey Dex.” She fanned her hands out and made a jazz hands gesture. “Surprise.”
F*cking right, it was a surprise.
It was Cathryn.