“It’s not a race, sir.”
“It is a race and you’re going to win. It’s going to be like Chariots of Fire. Go get your Walkman, get something good on it.”
“I did bring it actually. Do you want to listen, sir?” he said playing a dozen toxic bars of Paul Hewson’s singing and David Evans’s tedious, predictable and barely competent chord progressions.
“What did you think of that, sir?” Lawson said, grinning like he’d just played me Sibelius’s lost Eighth Symphony.
“Anodyne, conformist, radio-friendly bollocks, lacking in soul, grace, intelligence or joy,” I could have said but didn’t. Lawson was a fragile young man and was hurt easily.
“As long as it gets you over the line first,” I said.
I led Crabbie and Lawson downstairs to the car park where it was drizzling, cold and grey. Dalziel and the other men were waiting under the overhang. No sign of the Chief Inspector or Chief Superintendent Strong. How’d they get out of it? Some pigs are more equal than others.
“There you are, Duffy!” Dalziel said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
I took him by the elbow and led him away from the others.
I offered him my hand and he reluctantly shook it. “Kenny, look, if I was out of order yesterday I’m sorry. And I shouldn’t have raised my voice. We’re all in this together. Us against the enemy you know? And I should have said congratulations on the promotion. OK?”
“Is this you apologising?”
“I’m apologising, yes.”
Dalziel’s face cracked a little, but then assumed its previous fixity.
“I’m sorry too, Duffy, but I’m still going to make a formal report about you. You can’t say stuff like that over the switchboard and around the office. You set a bad example for the other officers. Ill discipline is infectious and without discipline what are we?”
I disengaged my hand from his, muttering “dick”.
“What did you say!”
“Nothing. Are we ready to go? There’s over twenty men getting soaked here.”
“Twenty-six to be exact,” Kenny said.
“Or over twenty, to not be exact. Come on, blow your whistle or whatever you do.”
“All right! Everybody ready? Let’s go!” Kenny said and started the stopwatch.
We had to run a kilometre in under eight minutes which was the distance approximately from the police station to the castle and back.
We set off at a run straight into the teeth of a stiff east wind and sea spray. Although we were going along the seafront and although we were all kitted out primarily in white shorts and T-shirts it did not look remotely like the scene from Chariots of Fire. Only half a dozen officers – including Lawson and Dalziel – managed to get back to the station before the eight-minute mark. Every other cop in the barracks failed. I made it in twelve minutes, just behind McCrabban. For the last two hundred metres I thought I was having a heart attack, but at least I made it in running. Some of the fatter sergeants couldn’t walk the distance in under twenty minutes.
Soaked, cold and wheezing I hit the showers downstairs.
“Fitness test for CID, never heard of such a thing,” I muttered to myself. I dried, changed and I was back upstairs in my office with a restorative vodka gimlet when the Chief Inspector knocked on the door.
“Come in!”
He entered with a clipboard and an air of gloom.
“Ah sir, how were the results?”
He sat down and looked glumly at the stats on the clipboard in front of him. “Everyone failed except for Lawson, Dalziel, Pollock, Hitch, O’Neill and McClusky.”
“Can I have a look, sir?”
He handed it over and I was pleased to see that Lawson had indeed come in first.
“This isn’t going to look good on the report,” he said.
“Just do what all the other stations do,” I suggested.
“And what’s that, Duffy?” he asked.
“Fake the results. As long as they’re on a bell curve and there are a few outliers they’ll believe it.”
McArthur laughed bitterly. “If only, Sean. But Chief Superintendent Strong is still here and Dalziel timed everyone, too.”
McArthur looked distracted and reflective. I didn’t know him well but I could tell that there was something else that was bothering him.
“This isn’t about the bloody fitness test is it, sir?”
He shook his head. “Can I get a drink?”
“Sorry, sir, don’t know where my manners were. Vodka gimlet?”
“What’s in it?”
“The way I make it is lime juice, vodka, ice and soda to taste. It’s very refreshing.”
“I’ll take a stiff one.”
I poured him a glass. He drank it and nodded appreciatively while I topped mine up.
“Surprisingly tart,” he said and put the glass on the table.
“Isn’t it?” I said sitting down again.
“Look, Duffy, there’s things you need to know.”
“What things?”
He smiled. “I’m on my way out.”
“Resigning? At your age, surely you—”
“Promotion. I’m probably moving up to divisional level in the summer. Strong’s promotion to Assistant Chief Constable creates a vacancy.”
“I see.”