Manon knows that Harriet, and most of their colleagues, cleave to the view that criminals either get off or get off lightly; that the system is stacked against the police. She’s aware that if police officers were allowed to draw up the legislation, it would probably contain the words ‘and throw away the key’. What worries Manon is she’s joining their ranks. It can often feel as if they’re fighting a tide of filth and losing; you only needed to do a week in child protection to lose any liberal tendencies you ever had.
Harriet became Elsie’s visiting daughter, because Elsie had no children of her own – she was twenty-five when the war took the boy she loved at Arras in 1940. His name was Teddy and she kept a photo of him by her bed, but Manon thought he was more an emblem of what had gone wrong. Elsie had had an abruption in her life. Grief had held her up, during which time she worked in a munitions factory and discovered how much she liked to work, when it had never really been an option before. When she emerged from mourning after the war, she found herself looking at a timer where the sand was running low.
‘There were no men left,’ she told Harriet, laughing. ‘None who wanted an old spinster in her thirties like me, at any rate. It just never happened for me, the family thing.’
Harriet called on Elsie every week and Manon occasionally went with her, witnessing between them a conspiratorial warmth. Elsie looked at Harriet with mischievous eyes, saying, ‘Thrash you this time.’ They played cribbage, or bridge when they could make a four with other stooped residents in the care home, though death often intervened (‘Wilf not here?’ ‘Not any more, no.’). Blackjack, beggar-my-neighbour, sudoku, and crosswords. Then, as Elsie became more vague – the shaking and the vagueness accompanying one another as if staying fixed in thought and deed was ungraspable – the games became more infantile: Guess Who?, Connect Four, puzzles, and pairs.
Elsie humanised Harriet, who had a tendency to be hard. She was the obligation that made her feel stretched and needed. Her joyful complaint. That drunken night when Harriet had confided in Manon (her kindred spirit in singleness and childlessness), she said, ‘When you don’t have kids, everyone assumes you’re some fucking ball-breaking career freak, but it’s not like that. It’s more, y’know, a cock-up. It’s something that happened to me. Elsie gets that. Plus, I really fucking hope someone will visit me when I’m pissing my pants in a care home.’
Davy and Manon drive out of HQ car park in an unmarked car that wears its snow like a jaunty hat, but as soon as they turn out of the gates, they slow to a halt. The traffic is always terrible on Brampton Road, a permanent feature of their forays out on jobs, but this queue has been made worse by the diversions set up around Edith Hind’s house on George Street, combined with considerable rubbernecking from the fine folk of Huntingdon. Davy taps on the steering wheel with his gloved hand, a marker to Manon that he is unperturbed.
‘This’ll take hours,’ says Manon, slumping down into the passenger seat and wedging her feet onto the dashboard, her knees up. She has her phone in her lap, texting Bryony.
Can’t do lunch. High-risk misper just blew up in my face. M
‘Sarge,’ says Davy.
‘Hmmm?’ she says, and she looks up to see Davy casting anxious glances at her feet and at the spotless fascia of his glove box.
‘You couldn’t—’
Her phone bleeps.
No worries. Am loving my court papers. Nothing cd tear me away. Not even pepper-flavoured water. B
‘Sorry, what?’ she says to Davy.
‘Your feet,’ he says, with another furtive glance at the offending boots, as if they might detonate.
‘It’s not even your car,’ she says, her fingers working on her phone. But she takes her feet down.
Tomoz maybe. M
Is Harriet losing the plot?
Yep. Crapping herself. Victim’s family mates with Galloway.
Holy Shit.
Yup.
At least your career isn’t in cul-de-sac. May chew arm off if have to do more filing.
Go away, please, am in middle of Very Important Investigation.
All right, Mrs Big Tits. Laters. PS. It’s always the uncle. Or the stepfather. Or the boyfriend. Or possibly a complete stranger.
‘How was the date, by the way?’ Davy asks.
They are moving now – at last – having turned off onto the A14 towards the Fenland village of March.
‘Don’t ask.’
‘Can’t have been that bad.’
‘Can’t it?’
‘Well then, there’ll be others – other responses to your ad.’
‘It’s not an ad, Davy. I’m not selling roller blinds. It’s a profile.’
And what a work of fiction that ‘about me’ section is.
Genuine, easy-going. I love life and laughter, a bottle of wine with friends, cinema and walks in the countryside. Passionate about what I do. Looking for someone to share all this amazing world has to offer.
Age: 35
Looking for: fun/a long-term relationship/let’s see what happens
Likes: sunshine, the smell of fresh coffee, walks on the beach
Dislikes: unexpected items in bagging area