CHAPTER 56
Alun went over to our little kitchen area, adding a little more milk to his tea, and I gave a quick glance around the team before joining him.

“Thanks, Alun”

“What for?”

“Watching her back over here”

He chuckled.

“Wasn’t the only one doing that, was I? Popular, was our Adam. It’s part of what I said about proper policing, isn’t it? You work next to someone like that, makes you want to pick up your own game, try and live up to them. Trouble comes when they set that bar too high”

I gave him a one-armed hug, feeling his tiredness rather than seeing it.

“Lynne OK?”

I could feel him sag.

“Not really, mate. CFS playing up something rotten. Take her to do the big shop, and she ends up sitting in the café while I do the rounds and check with her by phone. ‘Got no white bogroll, shall I get yellow?’ sort of thing. Gets me some weird looks, I can tell you”

“Well, you know we’re always around if you need us, Alun”

He turned to look me squarely in the eyes, head lifting from the pretence of watching his tea steam.

“I know, love. We all do, and I know you’ll all be there if and when, aye? It’ll get better. Comes in whatchamacallits, waves. Almost like that SAD thing, seasonal. Isn’t anything like that; it’s just that she has periods of being weaker than other times. She’ll perk up. Get her out for a curry again, that’ll do it!”

He turned away, breaking the hug as gently as he could, and I left him to his pride.

Work slowed down after that. I wasn’t complaining, for I really didn’t fancy another encounter with someone like Pig, and the likes of Charlie Cooper were certainly not on my Christmas list. Sammy had a series of cases for us to look through, filed as per Chris’s categories, and while most were Home Turf, a sizeable proportion were from Forn Parts. I noticed that our boss was moving the ‘fresh meat’ around as its ‘freshness wore off, and it was clearly for mentoring. We each had our own strengths, my own being that odd fascination with detail that sometimes left me wondering about Asperger’s, and having Lexie sitting with me while I worked my detail-fu would perhaps rub off.

Cooper’s name did surface, though, as the other investigation continued. We were locked out, perhaps from a desire to allow the other force to garner some kudos of their own, but the results were unsurprising. Meadowcroft Hall may not have been quite as foul as either Mersey View or Castle Keep, but Cooper had clearly been working hard at it. He picked up another couple of nested life sentences for it, and after it was over, I sat with my own child and watched cartoons and ate chocolate biscuits as I held him as close and tight as I could manage without frightening him.

It was better, though, than it would have been. Anyone who ever touched our boy would have found their life expectancy evaporating, and his laughter as he grew let me see what Deb and the others had lost, but his presence also eased my fears. Deb had had nobody, and Steve Elliott had been cut off from his own people, but Rhod had at least two generations of our family to watch over him, as well as a team of which I was so proud it hurt.

So I held my boy, ate too many of the biscuits, and tried not to squeeze him too tightly.

Motherhood brought so many changes, including spending afternoons with other mothers and their offspring, but as those were all too often some lesbians from Carmarthen and their brats, it was almost like being in the office.

All three infants were forming their own personalities, and Rhod in particular was quickly past ‘Mam! Mam! Mam!’ and using what were for a long time his two favourite words, ‘Want’ and ‘No’. Elaine and Siân’s quickly became Little Tone, or LT, and Sassie. I found myself treated to more than a few Mam-stares when I tried to give the other two mothers bits of advice based on my own much greater experience as a mother, but the sods just laughed at me before Elaine pointed out that they had already been over-advised by Sioned.

That was a golden time, made so much better by the return of my old friend Lainey from the edge she had been staring over. Siân summed it up one evening when we were having an overnight visit to theirs, all three children bedded down together on camping mats as Lainey did things in the kitchen.

“It wasn’t good, Di. My sweet woman always puts so much of herself into her work, aye? And she is always at work, even with the family. Protective, she is, and she can’t let go. You’ve met Sar. What do you think?”

I looked at her, trying to work out a safe reply.

“Um… Hard woman. I mean, she’s obviously a bloody good mother and that, but I would really hate to get on her wrong side”

Siân nodded, but there was a wistfulness in her eyes.

“Yes. That is what most people see, or what they see now, ah? They are sisters, Di. So much alike. Joe Evans nearly broke Sarah. She ran away immediately after our wedding, and though she smiled and laughed and danced like a mad thing, she was hollow. All face and no substance. My own sweet one is just the same, and to be honest I think it all comes down to that one bastard, him and his family. We all said it, didn’t we? Pushing so hard at a locked door, and then it opens, and you stumble, and if there’s nobody there, well, flat on your face, isn’t it? But strong arms to catch her, stronger ones to hold her…”

She grinned at me.

“No, Diane. Not just my arms, but all of us. Her parents, Arwel, Sarah’s two men, you two. I was thinking last night, about curses and blessings. That Chinese one?”

“May you live in interesting times?”

“Yes! Well, we have, haven’t we? All of us? But we have had those arms, that support. Sar forgot about that fact for too long, but she knows now, and that’s the thing about living through the interesting bits. You understand, in the end, if you survive, but you need someone to survive them for”

I automatically glanced towards the open door to the dining room, where three smaller persons were spark out in a nest of warm covers, and Siân smiled once more.

“Yes. Family and friends are just about enough, but, well, you are also a Mam. You know these things. My… No. Some people, let me say, and leave it at that, some people don’t find that out until almost too late. Now, important things: this year, are we to take all of our children somewhere warmer?”

Elaine had clearly been listening to the last part, and when she re-entered the living-room she held a bundle of Greek villa brochures and wore an evil grin. Assimilated!

A golden time in so many ways, and the promise of a future for all of us splashing in the edge of the sea or running along the sand screaming so loudly the gulls stared. Kindergarten. That first day of infant school, when I had to force myself to turn away from the little man I was betraying and abandoning to the hands of strangers.

And work. Occasionally something new, something different, but buried under slush piles of the mundane. I recalled that curse, and even though I knew better, I quietly prayed for some ‘interesting times’.

“Gather round, mates!”

Sammy looked almost cheerful that morning, perhaps even a little excited. He was carrying a briefing folder, and as his smile slowly drifted from ‘happy’ into ‘feral’, I found my own pulse speeding up. Please god, no Pig or Charlie clones, but something more interesting than how the contracts for an English town’s no-longer-new bypass road had been awarded.

He waved the folder.

“Local one this time, very much HT. This is one that CID should have picked up, but they are short-handed just now, or so I told them”

Jon laughed out loud at that remark, as he was clearly up to speed with Sammy’s ways of rephrasing reality.

“You grabbed off the DI’s desk or something?”

Our boss’s grin was almost manic.

“I may have done! Now, here’s the SP. We have a couple of unlicensed drinking dens, one in particular. Oh, Ellen? Could you check the door for me? Lock it. Our ears only for now”

Once we were secure, he settled himself on the edge of a desk, eyes twinkling.

“This could be a messy one, and it will definitely be a multi-agency job again. No, Jon. Not more fucking helicopters”

My boy held up his hand.

“Please sir, I didn’t say ‘fucking’, not at all”

Sammy was back to his old self with a vengeance.

2You may not have said it, Jonny Boy, but I definitely heard you THINK it! No, not whirly birds this time, but it will involve a lot of sitting in cars. We need to do a lot od staging, and it’s going to be stationary stuff. There’s a bit of humint on this one, but not much, and there is fuck-all in the way of CCTV where we would want it, or at least footage that isn’t owned by the targets. Place is a bit of a fort, apparently”

I looked across at Blake, who was clearly hooked, and then asked the obvious question.

“So, oh mighty one with the happy grin, what makes this one so messy? Surely a bit of a stag, time it right, and then in with a Forced Entry Team and lots of coppers?”

Sammy’s grin faltered slightly, a little bit of distaste showing.

“Drinking’s only one part of the business, Di. Our source tells us there’s a pit in there. Might be cockerels, but he is saying it’s a dog pit”