Darkness Dominates - Chapter 1

Driving through the centre of Thistlewood, Detective Constable Jade Pryce felt that the place she had grown up in held very few surprises. She hadn’t been born here. Her actual birthplace was Oldham, Manchester, but when she was ten months and six days old, her parents – Michael and Janelle – went to live in the place they would end up residing in for the next 23 and a half years. They’d made the move because he had received a promotion to manager of one of the branches of the company he worked for. The pay had been too good to turn down, and the fringe benefits, including the pension plan, seemed to make, back in 1990, for a better financial situation for the married couple. It wasn’t quite as secure now, but they were nowhere close to being in dire straits when it came to the issue of living within their means. He still had the job after all these years, and with Sinclair’s embracing the online shopping market, there had never been any real risk of the firm going to wall during the recession of the last few years. The only monetary burden that arose from life the Pryce family were living was that Janelle had given Jade a sister a couple of years after their arrival here – Sophie. Like Jade, she had turned into an adult and had flown the nest, but only on a part-time basis. She had gotten a yes from a number of universities. Cambridge and Oxford weren’t on that list. UCLAN was though, and after deliberation that lasted less than three days, she settled on that establishment as the one she most wanted to attend. The educational package included a residential option. She took it, but not because she wanted to get away from her mum & dad and her sister: it was more to do with not wanting to be one of those women who don’t leave home because of a false sense of family reliance. Janelle wanted her youngest daughter to select the local university, but Jade and her dad talked her round to the idea of the choice Sophie had made regarding adult education. When Jade helped her to settle into her university dorm, she found comparisons between Preston and the area that was the backdrop to her entire childhood and teenage years. These were reflected in the residential geography and in the way that all the businesses, shops, cafes and restaurants were huddled together away from where the inhabitants lived. These buildings were accompanied by all the public services that the residents depended on.

Thistlewood had received its city status due to the cathedral that stood across the road from the branch of Sinclair’s that Michael supervised. It hadn’t always had that category, however. It had originally been a new town, built sixteen years after Milton Keynes had materialised on the map. All the new generation of inhabitants, including Jade, had developed a dialect that amalgamated the Geordie and Manchester accents. Henceforth, that became the local language of this place. At the start of the 21^st century, the local council gave the go-ahead for expansion of urban and retail areas. The latter led to Coulter Lane being as synonymous with the big store chains as Oxford Street or Manchester’s Piccadilly area. Either side of the road were all the stores that catered to every aspect of people’s desire for retail therapy.

Jade was on her way to a less prosperous part of the city, unfortunately. Cunderton was the portion of the area that was most in need of social renovation, particularly with the kind of people that had made their home there. She often labelled them Geordie Shore ex-pats, but she was being too polite. Their behaviour was sometimes so bad that the people who had to put up with them thought of them as rejects from the TV show, rather than cast members. It was one of the places that fire engines and ambulances were reluctant to visit. Vandalism and violence were what was expected if they dared to enter. The police was the only emergency service to be brave enough to come down this way. Duckham Street and Hanbury Road received the most visits from the old Bill. The first of these two streets of shame was where Jade parked her car. Two marked vehicles and a police van were already there when she put the handbrake of her Avensis on. A tip-off concerning a cannabis plantation in someone’s greenhouse had been given to her by her superior, DCI Stewart Oliver – a former Detective Inspector with the London branch of the Met. He and his CID team had to deal with the second dog-related attack there’d been in the past two months. Both of the female victims had died from a massive loss of blood, and because both incidents happened in back alleys, it was harder to pinpoint an exact address where the murderous hound and its owner resided. A probable small-time drug operation was pushed quite a way down the list of prioritised crimes. Having the lowest police officer rank made her the ideal candidate to deal with this. Only four constables were assigned to this raid, including Lenora Gibbons, the WPC who went undercover at No.11, Duckham Street. Living there was Carl Daniels, a man who made Peter Sutcliffe look like the Dalai Lama. He was a walking PIF that set out to warn children and teenagers that this was who they could end up like if they got expelled. He was riddled with clichés surrounding the underclass: the most notable of them were the wide selection of tattoos he had inked on his body throughout his life. There were only a handful of areas on his skin where they weren’t prominent. His upper arms and lower thighs were where he was most muscular.

Daniels advertised this to the constables arresting him by kicking out at them. He couldn’t use his fists as he’d been placed in handcuffs. A see-through packet containing a quantity of the class-B drug had been found inside the top drawer of his bedside cabinet. He was quickly read his rights and frogmarched unceremoniously out of his aunt’s house. It was during this walk, he began causing merry hell for those in uniform physically making the arrest. One kick did catch the right half of a constable’s left ankle, but the PC winced instead of vocally revealing pain. He kept on pushing Carl towards the waiting van. He caught sight of Jade and spat at her face when he was brought close to where she was standing. Her face remained briefly immobile as she wiped the saliva off the bridge of her nose and onto the only bit of toilet tissue paper she had in her right trouser pocket.

“Nice to see you too – you fucking cunt!” she said under her breath. She couldn’t help emitting obscenities. Her job required her to deal with the scummiest of the scum, and it usually brought out the worst in her, in terms of language. As he was led away, Jade witnessed a collection of offences he’d been charged with moving vertically upwards like the words on a teleprompter that a newscaster had to read to the viewers watching the TV at home. She hoped what she was seeing in her mind would lead to a custodial sentence. DC Pryce wanted a long period – possibly three years – without having to soil herself mentally by being in his presence. She felt the same about the nineteen year-old thug who was planning to follow in Daniels’ footsteps – Leon Harris. He’d come out onto the front garden of the house to the right. His intention was rapidly transparent. Once the doors to the vehicle meant for multiple offenders were slammed shut, he started banging at them with both hands and yelling at whoever was in the driving seat.

“That’s my mate you got in there, you fucking twats! Bring him back or I’ll fucking well stab you lot where the sun don’t pissing well shine!”

The same two constables that had put Carl inside the van got heavy with Leon, pushing him back onto the middle of the pavement. He still tried to get past them, but they were both strong enough to ensure this wasn’t going to happen.

“Get back behind the kerb or I’ll fucking nick you, Harris! You got that?”

Leon gave the constable who’d delivered the brusquely-worded command the middle-finger gesture with his left hand once his back was turned. He then swaggered back into the house he’d come from. Carl’s aunt, Gina Norvelle was the next to come out, but she was too drunk to be as menacing as Daniels or as cocky as Harris. She couldn’t even stand up properly, even when responding to the Detective Constable’s provocative view of the state she was in.

“I fucking hope someone gives you HIV!” she shouted incomprehensibly at Jade. Not one word could hope to be understood. Everything she said was slurred and it would’ve taken an exceptional linguistic expert to unravel its meaning. It was automatic in lessening the insult’s potency.

Other families from this third circle of hell started to emerge from their terraced council houses and showed that they could easily re-write the book on how to act in a socially unacceptable manner. The most aggressive example was exhibited by the Hawthorne family. Their surname was posh, but how they behaved in public was anything but. Empty lager cans were used as missiles to cause injury to the constables and to DC Pryce. Most of the time, their aim sucked, but eighteen year-old Jody was a far better shot than the rest of them. One of the projectiles she’d lobbed landed against the forehead of the man who’d warned Harris to back off so ferociously. The impact split the skin slightly above his left eyebrow, but there was barely a trickle or two of blood that ran onto that eyelid. He fished out a few sheets of toilet paper he’d had in one of his pockets and tried to wipe most of it away. Jade didn’t see this occur. Her eyes were fixed on Jody’s tauntingly jubilant gesture. She was leaping up and down, thrusting her dukes in the air.

“I bagged myself a copper!” she twice shouted triumphantly. This was followed up by her doing a stirring motion with her arms and hands. Every time she did this, she chanted “Go, Josie! Go Josie!” Her brother – a red-haired youth offender named Boyd – clapped and cheered her for hurting someone who was trying to maintain law and order. The light rain that started to descend didn’t dampen the siblings’ enthusiasm for revelling in the cut the constable received from Jody. They kept on dancing like jerks as their clothes began getting wet. Jody’s throw of the lager can was more personally-motivated than the one made by her brother. She and Leon had recently become an item and Jody didn’t like the way that the policeman in uniform was getting in her bloke’s face.

“Are you okay?” Jade asked the constable.

“Never better: I live for the moment when I got something hard chucked at me!”

“Less of the sarcasm, Richards: do you want me to nick her?”

“Nah, it’s just a cut! I’ve had worse than this happen to me!”

“Okay, let’s get out of this shithole! I already feel like I need a shower!”

With no-one else to arrest, the only CID officer there and the police men and women in uniform headed for their vehicles. Before Jade got into hers, Lenora Gibbons walked over to her as she was opening the door on the drivers’ side and said “I don’t care what Richards said, you should really nick her, ma’am!” DC Pryce’s expression dictated how much she was against constables thinking they could their pennies worth in and not expect to be given an earful. WPC Gibbons was no exception to that dislike of hers.

“Firstly, he doesn’t want to press charges – and secondly, I’m quite capable of judging who needs to be arrested and who doesn’t! Try bearing that in mind in future!”

She was emulating one of the telling-offs Stewart gave to the officers who got too carried away in enforcing the law and overstepped the mark in the process. His influence filtered into this as it did into the decisions she made when carrying out her job. Lenora then walked over to one of the police cars and got into the rear passenger half, nearly trapping her baggy blue T-shirt – part of her undercover disguise – in the left door of the vehicle.

“Lenny’s got some cheek!” Jade said grumpily as she got back behind the wheel of her car. “Who the fuck does she think she is?” She tersely tucked some strands of her jet black hair behind her left ear, a physical gesture that openly demonstrated that someone had cheesed her off big time.

Saying her name that way wasn’t something that was likely to go down with Lenora. DC Pryce didn’t care. Jade and WPC Gibbons had never really been friends. This tepid hostility was left to simmer when Jade set her sights on becoming a member of DCI Oliver’s posse, and the disharmony between them wasn’t taken off the heat when Detective Sergeant Frank George got a transfer to Greater Manchester Constabulary, leaving the field clear for the possibility of wearing one’s own clothes to be a step nearer. Lenora was more dedicated to the core values of policing and wasn’t trying to get out of the uniform to further her career. Those were the exact words she’d used when she confronted Jade about this prospect. Fisticuffs weren’t part of the scene that followed. All the pair of them did was to throw back at one another heated remarks that polarised the division between their different ideas of the career they entered into. Jade explaining to Lenora that solving serious crime was just as much the responsibility of CID as those in uniform.

“You can do that without stepping out of your work gear” was Lenora’s response.

It was left at that. There didn’t seem to be any point in either of them of taking this discussion further. The deadlock reached was unavoidable: both parties would’ve ended up arguing more angrily. Their outlooks were just too different to come to a resolution. Lenora was one of the only ones who weren’t at the party to celebrate Jade’s ascension to Detective Constable. This milestone was still up-in-the-air a week before the day the party took place. Jade’s wasn’t the only name on the list of candidates. There was competition, but she had made the best impression on Chief Constable Peter Worth, Chief Superintendent Roger Clark & Commissioner Helen Linton. The shoes Jade ended up filling were Angela Korrell’s, as she moved up to the rank of Detective Sergeant.

However, that was over a year ago, and the honeymoon period was certainly over. If anything had broken her rose-tinted view of being new to the life of a police officer, it was getting the smaller investigations. For the most part, they always resulted in an arrest quickly, sometimes even within a two-hour time frame. She had yet to be involved in case where a member of the public had been killed. Jade was not going to be petulant about it, mind you. She kept putting it into her mind that she happened to be fortunate to be in this CID rank, and prevented herself from wanting too much, too soon. She retained that outlook when she reached her desk. DC Pryce’s time with Daniels in interview room 5 had been fruitful, in spite of the filth he was coming out with in terms of insults. There was no attempt by him to be violent towards her, but there were veiled threats. The evidence found was circumstantial and she knew that he could easily say that the cannabis in the greenhouse and the packet of the drug belonged to someone else. Even with those factors in the equation, she took the decision to charge him, regardless of whether it would satisfy a jury. Jade switched on the computer and waited for the system to boot up correctly. When everything was displayed on the screen, she accessed the program which had been installed for typing documents to write a report on the details pertaining to the arrest of Carl Daniels for possessing Cannabis plants, along with the end product, with intention to supply. She buried the small fragment of dismay that she hadn’t gotten him a much more serious offence to be charged with. She achieved this mindset by judging it as important a result as some serial killer, multiple rapist or terrorist mastermind being brought to account for their crimes. Seeing that it wasn’t trivial, made DC Pryce keener to finish the report as soon as possible. At intermittent intervals, she used a tissue from a box of hankies to wipe some of the dust starting to accumulate on the desk. A quarter was blitzed each time, but thin streaks of detached skin flakes weren’t that easy to remove. This rush of enthusiasm halved the time she took to finish the report. Her estimated duration was suddenly an inflated number. Having checked the printers were all switched on, Jade clicked the ‘print’ symbol on the stages of churning out the pages of the finished document and listened as one of them was activated. When the noises ceased, she went over to the printer in question and collected the four pages from where the pieces of paper had emerged. She moved the topmost one to the bottom of the shallow pile, and so on. This put the pages in the right order. She was satisfied with what had ended up on each of them. The only omission was concerning Lenora’s insubordinate tone: she’d decided that it wasn’t exactly relevant and focussed on nothing but the obvious points of interest officers in CID were expected to concentrate on.

She left it on DCI Oliver’s desk, finding the door to his office wide open, in a symmetrically vertical direction – the top of the document pointing towards the empty swivel chair. All officers had them, but the backrest of his was taller than the others. Rank superiority existed in this as well as in other aspects of the plain clothes hierarchy.

Jade then went down to the coffee machine. She was four minutes into drinking her Americano when DS Korrell emerged through one of the two doors on the left-hand side of this modern drinks dispenser. The glass centres showed the staircases that connected all the four floors of the building. It was a corkscrew design, but Jade tended to half-close her eyes as she descended. The circular motion of walking down the steps made her feel a little dizzy, and this did occasionally prompt the feeling of nausea. She preferred to use the lift that was to the left of DC Donnie Matthews’ desk to get to the ground floor.

“I don’t know how you can climb those stairs in your condition, Angela.”

The comment was made in relation to Angela waiting for the results of the test to determine why she wasn’t getting pregnant. The Detective Sergeant and her husband, Ryan had been trying for almost two years. That domestic success had unfortunately been eluding them both. She began wearing a sad smile.

“Is it bad news, Angela?”

“It is, Jade.”

“What did the results say?”

“What Ryan and I hoped it wouldn’t be. I’ve got a faulty womb!”

What Angela had actually been told had been more medical in the explanations given, but she couldn’t be bothered to go into the detail the doctor delivering the devastating information went into. She asked Jade to get her a coffee.

“If I got that kind of news, I’d want to get well and truly off me face with ten pints of lager!”

“There’s no need to be generous with your words in front of me: I know you’d use your time at The Tiger & Swan to celebrate not having kids, not commiserate.”

“I can’t mask my indifference to being a mum, can I”

“Not in the slightest!”

“Seriously though, Angela, I do feel bad for you – I know you really wanted this: not being able to have kids has to suck massively!”

“There’s one up-side – I don’t have to fucking feel guilty about getting wasted until closing time. Why don’t you not feel bad together...starting at 7pm!”

“It’ll have to be about 8.30pm.”

“Why then, Jade?”

“My bad: I forgot to tell you that I’m calling round at Marcus’ house at seven this evening!”

“Is he the male nurse?”

“He was: now he’s Dr. Cartwright! He aced his junior doctorate exams a few months ago.”

“Congrats, Jade!”

“There’s no need to be glad for me, given your bad news.”

“Nah, don’t be daft – hearing your good news is what I need – that and six pints.”

“Is Ryan coming?”

“He needs male company – I need the female sort!”

With a couple of sips of her coffee, Jade thought about the evening yet to arrive.

“Why don’t you come with me to Dunning Park? Marcus won’t mind you being there.”

“Nah, you’re cool! The 8.30pm slot sounds fine.”

Angela started thinking about why Jade was only staying for about an hour, when she envisaged her colleague, who had recently become a friend to her, staying the night with Marcus. The inevitable question popped up in her head and she couldn’t help but ask it.

“How come you’re there for sixty minutes? I thought he’d want you there in the morning when he wakes up!”

“8.30pm is when he goes over to his best friend’s house...or should I say mini-mansion...for her Bridge parties.”

“That’s a weird thing for him to do: is his mate into obscure hobbies?”

“She isn’t generally: it’s more a social gathering.”

“You said “she”: what’s her name?”

“Catherine Hinton-Kingsley.”

“So she’s one of these ‘Posh Totty’ types...like those girls in that ‘St Trinians’ movie franchise reboot.”

“No, she runs the local Refugee Integration Centre.”

“They’ve been popping up a lot since that new guy took over as Home Secretary.”

“You mean John Arden?”

“Yeah, him”

“Wasn’t he the one he cost Labour the Blackpool constituency a few years back?”

“Could be, I guess, Jade! I’m not really clued up on MP’s names or faces.”

“Oh well” said DC Pryce nonchalantly. “Here’s to 7.00pm, then!”

The two female officers allowed their cardboard cups to gently chink, as if toasting some anniversary.

 

Jade’s beloved car pulled up to the kerb that looked onto the residence of the man she had fallen in love with. She had to get out quick, as an approaching vehicle was heading to where she’d opened the driver’s door, slam it and reach the relative safety of the street. Incidents with cars mounting the pavements were an everyday reality, but the vehicle drove on without getting anywhere close to where she was walking. As she made the diagonal ascent to his front door, she let her mind absorb the scale of where he lived, in comparison to her own abode. Marcus Cartwright’s house had two garages on either side; the large driveway capable of fitting more than vehicle in there; the width of the property sandwiched in by these garages; they all tugged at Jade’s curiosity as to the means by which a junior doctor could afford a place like this. A round quad acted as a kind of grassy island, built into the orange V-shaped paving stones that made up the driveway’s surface. She walked around it a couple of times, but she lost interest in observing the custom-made the tiny spherical field and looked to see if her beau was staring out of either of the rooms at the front. Where she was staring now caused her to glance up and see white exterior walls and blue window frames. During this extended stare, the home owner had emerged and was fascinated by how intently Jade was observing the outside architecture.

“It’s the same round the back.”

“God, you made me jump!”

“Sorry about that Jade! I was just wondering how long you could keep on watching the front of my place.”

“You could fit my house in here twice over.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen where you live.”

“It’s Hollis Road – it’s not much to look at...just three blocks of terraced housing.”

“Fancy a coffee?”

“Just the one”

She moved nearer to him and let her top lip caress his bottom lip. He pretended to pull back, but their mouths met more fully and about half a minute of swapping saliva was underway. The period of sucking face ended when Jade started to feel the cold.

“It’s chilly for September” she declared.

“This is nothing” replied Marcus “It’s going to a whole lot chillier around midnight.”

“I know, Marcus – I saw the forecast this morning.”

The two of them raced through the front door to get out of the cold air. Whilst Marcus shut it behind him, Jade let her eyes take a whistle-stop tour of the staircase in the middle of the wide corridor and the three doors in the walls on either side. Vinyl floor-covering sporting a chessboard design was what was beneath hers and her boyfriend’s feet. She couldn’t see the whole of the next floor up, but she caught sight of part of a door on the left wall upstairs.

“Is that where you bedroom is?”

“One of these days Jade, you’ll get to see the inside of it.”

She pondered the promise for a moment whilst going further down the corridor. Opening the first door in the left-hand downstairs hallway, she found herself gazing into a big living room. She didn’t enter but savoured the size of its interior. The destination inside the house was the dining room. There resided the leather couch that Marcus liked to hold Jade in his arms on. This was what he did there since she officially became his girlfriend two years ago.

It took a whole year for that to happen. They didn’t meet through any blind dates set up by third parties, nor were they participants in the speed-dating craze. Jade and Marcus’ first meeting was in the course of him accidentally being arrested by her for using a dark corner of a railway bridge as a public toilet, two streets away from where she lived. He gave his reason for urinating in a public place as not being able to hold it in any longer, but she didn’t believe him. It was one of the last occasions she nicked someone in her uniform for something minor. A fortnight later, she’d traded that outfit for her normal day clothes permanently. The next time they ran into one another was when Jade met up with Sophie at a more contemporary-style bar. He was there with his blonde-haired pal, Catherine, but invited the two of them over for a drink. Ms Hinton-Kingsley said very little to either of them, so there was more scope for Marcus to chat with the two sisters. This wasn’t a date either. The first meeting that came close to being thought as that by them was when they entered a cafe on Frost Street, a haven for coffee shops and restaurants, independently. They hadn’t entertained any notion they would both show up there. The surprise on their faces when they did was completely genuine, and they both said “I didn’t know you liked to come here” at precisely the same moment. Marcus took over paying the cost of the coffees and the Bakewell Tart slices before leaving. That endeavour surprised Jade even more. Her past dating experiences had seen her having to split the bill: the males hadn’t been as considerate as her current romantic partner.

The aspect of Marcus’ personality that most made her want to be his girlfriend was the mixture of mysteriousness and approachability. It excited her emotionally to have someone who exhibited two opposing traits. She was forever wondering how someone could mix these individual characteristics together so expertly, but she was, for the foreseeable future at least, content not find an answer to this conundrum.

Their first official date happened at Gladstone’s Restaurant, three buildings down from Thistlewood’s own HMV store. Passing it on her way in to the dining establishment made her think about how near this branch came to closing its doors. The worst case scenario didn’t happen, fortunately, and the income it brought to the city was allowed to keep flowing. The beginning of their first proper meal out together wasn’t as successful as the rest of it. His shift at the Meadowfield Hospital had overran by nearly fifteen minutes, and she had to wait twenty-odd more until he came rushing in. He didn’t look flustered, which made Jade slightly suspicious about the manner of his entrance into Gladstone’s, but he was able to explain that away convincingly. They ordered their meals first and the alcoholic beverages second. Jade and Marcus didn’t choose the same dishes: he went for one that contained red meat and she opted for a chicken-based dinner. The drinks also revealed the differences they had in what they preferred to have alongside their meals; his was red wine...hers was, as always, lager. There was a newly implemented additional ingredient she’d started to take time – a shot of lime juice. The concoction did test the strength of her bladder, but she always passed it with flying colours. Later on, at the taxi rank to the right of the restaurant’s entrance, they almost kissed, but caution kicked in for both of them, and they settled for a simple “goodnight” being said. The climax of the second date was when they finally locked lips. Typically, it took place in the local multiplex in Hanson’s Arcade – the interior parade of shops that stretched from the left-hand side of Compton’s Meats to the street directly over the road from the bus station – where the tradition of couples paying for seats that were at the back was still flourishing. They became part of it when DC Pryce made a kittenishly salacious remark about one of the male actors in the film they’d come here to see. This succeeded in making Marcus embrace the romantic atmosphere the movie was generating between them and a gradual move towards one another’s mouths was soon in effect.

The very next day, the pair of them discussed via their mobile phones whether or not Jade should inform her family she now had a new boyfriend. Marcus had no obvious objection to it, but surprisingly, Jade decided to wait a few months to see if this relationship could last longer than that period. He had no immediate family, just his female best friend, Catherine, so he had an extremely limited range of people to tell, namely just her. He never told Jade what her reaction was, but DC Pryce was eager to tell her about Sophie’s response. It involved her wanting as many details as her older sibling could provide, but Jade compressed the collection of facts about Marcus to four. They satisfied her younger sister, but she knew a broader account of their courtship would be expected by her mum and dad, just in case there might be a marriage proposal on the horizon. Neither she nor Marcus was thinking that far ahead, but the possibility wasn’t going to be shoved under the carpet and omitted from future conversations about commitment. The truth was, as she saw it, they had a right to obtain expanded details about her relationship with Marcus. When they did quiz her about that kind of info, she was talked into bringing him round to their house. It went reasonably well, but Michael’s own upbringing did bring the class divide between those from the north and the south slightly into his first opinion of Marcus. Nonetheless, he felt his daughter was mature enough to make her own decisions about who she fell in love with, and chose to keep his view of this posh twenty-something man to himself.

The second anniversary of the two of them getting loved-up on this sofa was suddenly interrupted when Jade realised how long she’d been seated here. She checked the time on the screen of her mobile phone.

“Sorry about this, babe” Jade said to Marcus “but I’ve got to make tracks – Angela’s expecting me at The Tiger & Swan at half-eight. It’s gonna’ take me a good thirty or so minutes to get there.”

She encased her reluctance to rise from the couch and stood up. Jade had a go at straightening out the creases in her dark green trousers before walking towards the downstairs corridor.

“I wish you could stay longer, but Catherine’s strict about our shared pastime. She doesn’t like the other guests being kept waiting to start the Bridge evening.”

“How do you play Bridge?”

“When I get chance, I’ll show you.”

This was a vague assurance, but Jade was not really disappointed by it. Her life wasn’t going to be enhanced by possessing an enthusiasm for this card game. The nearest she’d come to it was watching people play it on episode of ‘Poirot’ on the telly.

She collected her shoes from the chocolate-coloured carpet and slid the first one on. A knock at the door distracted DC Pryce from getting the second shoe onto her right foot, and she had to wait until she was in the corridor with Marcus before continuing to put her footwear on. When the door was opened by him, Jade saw Catherine standing there. She was wearing a similar outfit to one the police officer had seen being worn by the Duchess of Cambridge in news footage. Without waiting for him to ask her in, Ms Hinton-Kingsley strode in. Put out by the brazenness of the way she entered, Marcus sarcastically said “Come in – why don’t you!” Marcus’ other visitor rose above his attempt at sarcasm: she had gained immunity to it throughout the number of occasions he’d employed it.

“You’re early, Catherine” continued Marcus.

“No I’m not” she answered. “Your mobile phone clock is two minutes slow! Everyone’s arrived at my place.”

She issued Jade with a telling glance. DC Pryce took the hint immediately and collected her coat from where she had originally taken it off.

“I know you want him to yourself, Cathy, so I’m just leaving now.”

“That’s right, you are”

“Catherine!” he barked.

“I’ll call you after tomorrow’s shift at the hospital”

“I should be done about five or six, but these are never set in stone: if there’s a problem, I’ll try texting you.”

“If you can’t, you can’t” replied Jade understandingly. “My days are just the same! I never really know how many hours I’ll be expected to work.”

Jade wrapped her arms around the back of Marcus’ neck and kissed him passionately, even including her tongue in the embrace. Her lips pulled away after twelve seconds and she made a swift beeline for the door that been accidentally left ajar. Jade made a point of not returning Catherine’s gaze: it whole-heartedly suggested some sort of disapproval of her presence. When DC Pryce shut the door behind her, Marcus turned to his remaining guest and yelled out “Why did you have to be like that with her?”

“Why did I have to be like what with her?”

“Why were you being obviously intolerant to her being in my house?”

Catherine stared hard at him before momentarily turning her head away from him. She then tilted her head slightly downwards and proceeded to look directly at Marcus again. Her mouth was open, ready to speak. The teeth on either side of the two middle ones beneath the centre of the upper gum line had become pointier. She pressed her right index finger on them both individually and said “This is why!” Marcus’ pair of lethally sharp molars soon manifested themselves into that area of his jaw too.

“That still doesn’t excuse you talking to Jade like that!”

The tooth alteration hampered his ability to enunciate, but his speech was still more or less comprehensible to anyone listening. In this case, it was Catherine.

“It does if it makes her more reluctant to be visit you here, Marcus.”

“That’d suit you down to the ground!”

She offered no denial of this being the honest truth.

“It would, Marcus!” she stated very sharply. “What’s it going to be like for her when she’s an OAP and you look exactly the same?”

The query made him employ a moment or two of silence, whilst he decided what next to say. Catherine speedily delayed that with a comment that followed on from what she’d said previously.

“If you love her, you know the two options available to you...and to us all.”

“Break-up with her or turn her” he said with grim resignation.

“You can think about that when you, I and those who are waiting in my people carrier go on our nightly hunt.”

Marcus looked at Catherine and said “Let me fetch my coat”. This was his way of acknowledging Ms Hinton-Kingsley had talked him into submission.

With their true selves revealed at the onset of the night-time hours, Marcus & Catherine were across the road at her house. The driveway had the same shaped paving stones, but they were magenta instead of orange. Catherine signalled to the vehicle’s driver to start the engine. The people carrier started backing out of her drive as soon as Dr Cartwright and Ms Hinton-Kingsley were inside. After it did a two-point turn to reverse into a position suitable for its departure, it gradually moved forward, picking up speed at a measured pace as it headed towards the turn-off to the main road. The vehicle indicated left, and it vanished around that particular corner.

 

The sign for The Tiger & Swan was a facsimile of the ones that hailed from over a hundred years ago. Its exterior had a similarly historical style to it, but that too was a well-constructed replica of the way these buildings used to look. It was actually one of the first buildings of this new city to be constructed. A tiny gust of wind caused the thick wooden sign to rock gently to and fro as DC Pryce walked past it, whilst heading from her car to the bar’s main outer doors. There were two more inside. The glass windows on each one were littered with posters about forthcoming attractions and two matching ones that reminded the customers that smoking anywhere on the premises was a definite no-no. She pushed them open and spotted DS Korrell seated at the table right under the dartboard. On her way to greet her, Jade diverted her stroll to where the drinks and food was ordered from. She handed her car keys to the current landlord, Frank George, who was always behind the bar counter, ready to collect them off those who’d driven here.

“I’ll swing by here tomorrow lunchtime and pick them up, along with Angela’s.”

“You’d better hold that off until tomorrow evening, Jade” said Frank.

“Whatever for”

“She’s on her third pint now.”

“Shit, she’s taken her news harder than I thought! I wouldn’t have gone to Marcus’s house if I’d known she’d take it this much to heart!”

“What bad news did she get?”

“Never you mind, Frank!”

Realising he had been too nosy for his own good, Frank said “Sorry, Jade”.

“That’s okay! Can you fix us up with two taxis in a few hours?”

“You’re not going to be drinking for that long, are you?”

“Can’t answer that, Frank – its’ more than my pint’s worth!”

He chuckled slightly at the way she had substituted the word ‘job’ for ‘pint. It had turned the conventional version of the saying on its head, and that was what made it funny for him. Frank responded to the sight of another couple of customers heading to the bar and went to serve them. Leaving the chance to get her first lager & lime of the night alone for a short spell, Jade went over to the circular table Angela was making herself comfortable, and drunk, at.

“You’re taking a risk sitting there, Angela?”

“What do you mean?”

“The dartboard is right above your head.”

She twisted round and upwards slightly for a moment and then sat straight again.

“Oh that! You needn’t worry about me getting a dart in one of my eyes – the crowd that usually has matches here aren’t anywhere in the building.”

Already, Jade had noticed a loosening of the Detective Sergeant’s grammar. The third pint was half-full and DC Pryce was aware that in an hour the tell-tale signs of drunkenness would become considerably more transparent to the other Tiger & Swan regulars.

“Maybe this wasn’t the best idea, Angela!”

Common sense that hadn’t filtered through before, when the two police officers were planning to get shitfaced, was invading Jade’s conscience now. She was bombarded by the mental image of Jiminy Cricket wagging his right finger at her and tapping his left foot at the same time.

“I thought you were up for it!”

“I was, until Frank told me you’d started without me. How long have you been here drinking by yourself?”

“Since ten to seven, Jade”

“Yeah, well I’ve had a change of heart, Angela!”

“I don’t want you to!”

“I don’t want me to, but I’m likely to get it in the neck from DCI Oliver, if you turn up to work really hung over, when I had a chance to stop that from happening.”

All of a sudden, Angela felt her heartache overpower her and her eyes gave up a matching pair of tears. They streaked down both cheeks as she enquired “What should I do if I can’t get pissed out of my mind?”

“Go home to your other half.”

DS Korrell nodded and finished what was left of her pint. She wasn’t drunk to the level of being wobbly on her legs and was able to stand without help from anyone around her. However, that didn’t change Frank’s policy regarding customers who got here by using their own vehicles. When he saw Angela, he immediately phoned for a cab.

“Cheers” said Jade.

One arrived within the space of a quarter of an hour. DS Korrell was doubly fortunate. The cab driver was his son-in-law, David Nathan. He’d married Frank’s eldest daughter, Stephanie, a few years hence. That put him on Mr George’s radar regarding sensible and trustworthy cab drivers. He was more careful that way, ever since a man with a history of sexual assaults wangled his way into a job with that taxi firm and re-offended, with devastating results for the victim. The reputation of that cab business was almost left in ruins but David was the driver that helped the people of Thistlewood, especially the female inhabitants, have faith in it being safe again. Jade gave Stephanie’s husband Angela’s home address and watched as the taxi made its way out of the pub’s car park. When DC Pryce re-entered the bar, she too changed her mind about the consumption of alcohol tonight, and she ordered a fruit juice instead.

“You’d better have these back then, Jade!”

Mr George handed DC Pryce’s car keys back to her. Jade tried to gesture a refusal by shaking her head, but Frank rebuffed it.

“That policy is only for those who have been drinking lager, beer or other spirits: doesn’t apply to fruit juice!”

Grasping the sense that Frank was business-like about that point, Jade willingly took her car keys back off him. She had only just put them in her left coat pocket when she noticed a woman aged between nineteen and twenty-three pass by her whilst on her mobile to someone. Using her detection skills, Jade was able to recognise that the voice on the other end of the line was male. Working that out in her head wasn’t a difficult endeavour: she had made it clear to the punters she was walking past by calling this man by the mortifyingly crass pet-name – ‘Sugar-Butt’. Her ensemble activated the idea that she had taken clothing tips from Julia Roberts’ character in ‘Pretty Woman’ The call she was engaged in was distracting her from paying due attention to where she was walking. Twice she nearly collided with customers who were trying to get their drinks to the tables their friends of family members were resting their behinds at. There were no signs of spillage on either individual, but they were still cross at the young woman’s clumsiness. Jade’s visual interest in her faded instantaneously and she asked Frank about his first born.

“Stephanie? Yeah, she’s fine! She’s trying for a nipper! Not sure I’m ready to be called ‘granddad’, but then who is!”

The doors were opened by the scandalously-dressed woman two punters had nearly collided with and a sharp rush of cold air made its way up to the section of the bar where Jade was leaning against. She shivered a little, but it closed quickly, blocking off any more from heading her way. Her toes got the coldest edge of it, and she gently stamped her feet to create a fraction of warmth. Jade surveyed as much as the pub’s interior as she could, but there wasn’t anyone else she felt she recognised nearby. She took another swig of the fruit drink and took out a fiver.

“You know what, Frank, I’m gonna’ head home. Get an early night.”

She stood back from the bar counter, with her handbag under her left arm, and started to walk towards the two sets of double doors, from where she had entered. She called out “See you again soon!” to Frank. He waved back as she pushed open the twin door on the left and disappeared through it. The coldness had increased a tad as she pushed open one of the outer double doors and she was rubbing her arms somewhat. Jade was on her way to her car when she heard something being knocked over round the right-hand side passage of the pub’s exterior. The concrete path led to the rear of the building, and when she got to a point when she could see the yard at the back, DC Pryce saw the pair of legs belonging to the woman with provocative clothing. Her approach was stealthy. She was gradual in her movements to reach the female laid on the ground and it did take her more than thirty seconds to get a better look at whether the owner of these legs had fallen over and knocked herself unconscious, or if the situation was more serious. When Jade reached the rear of the pub, she saw that there was no doubt that the 2^nd scenario was the appropriate one in this instance. The female’s eyes were still open but a feel of her wrists told the whole story. DC Pryce gave the deceased some dignity and shut her eyelids. There was no sign of the object that was supposed to been toppled over, but Jade was starting to render this event as trivial, in the face of her discovering a dead body. Obeying the first instinct any police officer would employ, she raced back the way she came and dashed without hesitation back into the cosy warmth of The Tiger & Swan’s interior. The first person she spoke to once back inside was Frank. She whispered to him “I’m sorry, Mr George, but you won’t be able to call time on serving your regulars: you have to keep them here! I can’t explain now, but I will once my superior arrives.” He knew what a police officer meant when they said that and nodded his understanding, without arousing the belief amongst the customers that something serious was afoot. She rushed back out into open as quickly as she had come back in. As she leaned against one of the wooden tables with benches attached, Jade selected DCI Oliver’s private mobile number and slid it across to the ‘call’ option and then touched it with the middle finger of her left hand.

“Hello, sir? It’s DC Jade Pryce! I’m at The Tiger & Swan, sir: I’ve found a woman’s body round the back of our local!”

She knew full well that the outcome of this phone call would entail a night without sleep. Armed with this certainty, Jade steeled herself to be as alert and focussed as she could be, despite how tired she might get.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright - J.D. Taylor.