It was early autumn and the usual chilly wind came off the sea and from the Scandinavian plains. She was topless but with a thick towel hanging round her shoulders and she wore drill shorts. Fred, in deference to the weather, also wore shorts.
Fred had cooked lunch in the camper and they’d slept after the meal. The sun was slipping now and he thought the day almost perfect. He was never away from his job. The kids in the section had lives beyond the police station – they went clubbing, rode mountain bikes in the forests around the capital, joined book groups and socialised with each other. Some studied for university-sponsored e-degrees. The wind tugged at his close-cropped hair and sometimes a gust shook him or he shivered. He was dedicated to a job that the kids found obsessive – and tedious. His wife, bless her, knew when to leave him to his thoughts. He nurtured images, couldn’t escape them: the scar, the girl pushing past, elbowing him aside.
She hummed softly beside him, and the gulls screamed. One naturist had braved the chill, a woman, and a small dog scurried close to her. It wasn’t fair. If the victim made no accusation and no other witness corroborated the Englishman’s story, the case would collapse.
Fred walked on. He knew where the boy came from – he had been to San Luca, Plati and the coast at Locri, where the beaches were warm and the carabinieri had their barracks.
Did he make a difference? he wondered. The question nagged at him whether he was at work or not. It was hard to imagine that he did, or ever had, and even harder to believe he could in the future.
‘The key thing to remember, all of you, whatever your rank, is that you make a difference.’
Carlo sat at the back. The canteen was the usual venue for a talk by an HMRC visitor from London. The woman doing the chat might have been from Human Resources or one of the myriad managers who seemed capable of beating the cull that emasculated uniforms and investigations.
‘What we’re aiming for is what I call “harm reduction”. Cutting down the damage caused to the addicts in our society, and getting a firmer grip on the revenue lost to the Treasury by the smuggling industry. We want a lean, modern organisation to be at the cutting edge of knocking back the power of today’s criminal sitting cockily on the international scene.’
He didn’t yawn. Some of the younger uniforms seemed impressed that a big player had travelled to see them, and at a weekend. The old sweats – Carlo to the fore – were too canny to show their contempt.
‘We know when we’re on course because the price of cocaine rises. The higher it goes – through your efforts – tells us we’re doing well, seizures are up and the criminals are suffering, losing money. The higher the price, the better we’re placed. It’s evidence of our success at interception. You are on the front line and you’re doing damn well.’
Except that the price was in free-fall. There was a journalist at the back, from a national paper, scribbling energetically. He might even have believed some of the crap that the press office was feeding him. In common with most of the guys who had cut their teeth on Green Lanes, Carlo was underwhelmed by administrators. But he needed his job and kept quiet. He should have been at home, raking leaves or . . . If redundancy beckoned, the future didn’t look good.
‘We want to improve the statistical rate of seizures, arrests and convictions. They all send a message loud and clear that the United Kingdom has elite security on its borders. We want to see a rise in the confiscation of assets, so that felons cannot live the good life after release from well-deserved custody sentences. Whatever it is – bootleg vodka, cigarettes without duty paid, bogus labels on clothing that comes from cheap sweat-shop labour – we want to demonstrate zero tolerance. You are achieving this, and we’re sincerely grateful to you. Thank you.’
No mention of cutbacks or staff lay-offs, nothing about the price of Class-A stuff being at rock bottom because narcotics were swamping the country . . . and nothing about China, the big moneybags who must not be offended: a container load of cheap leather wallets of third-world origin is shipped to a UK dock, then reshipped to Naples on Gioia Tauro, where the fake Gucci labels are added, and sent on, as genuine, to China. The Italians bankroll the operation with British criminal connivance, and the money comes back from China, rinsed and dried, perfectly laundered.
There was faint applause, then a stampede to get back to the duty posts. He would return to the cottage, maybe do some expenses, rake some leaves and dream.
‘It’s an opportunity. Don’t know much about the people or the place . . .’
Bent Horrocks lay on his back and the woman’s fingers, not her finest feature but with long nails, played in his chest hairs. By now Angel, his wife, would also be flat on her back, snoring quietly after her lunchtime drink: ‘I’m not an alco, love, just like a drop to help my digestion.’