“Stupid old bags,” muttered Uncle Arthur.
“Now, now,” said Tommy’s mother. “Be nice, Arthur. Don’t draw attention to yourself.”
The conversation he had overheard last night still worried Tommy as he ate his bacon and eggs. They had definitely mentioned the money. Was his mother about to get involved in something criminal? Was it Uncle Arthur who was going to involve her? If that was so, he had to stop it before it happened, or she would go to jail. The money and the gun were in Uncle Arthur’s room, after all, and his mother could deny that she knew anything about them. Tommy had heard his mother insisting before they came away that they would each have a room. Uncle Arthur hadn’t liked the idea because it would cost more money, but he had no choice. Tommy knew what it was like when his mother had made up her mind.
The bag and gun would have Uncle Arthur’s fingerprints all over them. Tommy was certain Uncle Arthur must have handled the bag and the items in it after he had picked them up at the pub, if only to check that everything was there. But his mother would have had no reason to touch them or even see them, and Tommy himself had been careful when he lifted and opened the bag.
“Pass the sauce,” said Uncle Arthur. “What are we doing today?”
Tommy passed the HP Sauce. “Why don’t we go up the Tower?” Tommy said.
“I don’t like heights,” said Uncle Arthur.
“I’ll go by myself, then.”
“No, you won’t,” said his mother, who seemed as concerned about heights as she was about water.
“Well, what can we do, then?” Tommy asked. “I don’t mind just looking at the shops by myself.”
“Like a bloody woman, you are, with your shops,” said Uncle Arthur.
Tommy had meant bookshops and record shops. He was still looking for a used copy of Dr. No and hoping that the new Beatles single “Help!” would be released any day now, even though he would have to wait until he got home to listen to it. But he wasn’t planning on going to the shops, anyway, so there was no sense in making an issue of it. “I might go to the Pleasure Beach as well,” he said, looking at Uncle Arthur. “Can you give me some money to go on the rides?”
Uncle Arthur looked as if he were going to say no, then he sighed, swore, and dug his hand in his pocket. He gave Tommy two ten-shilling notes, which was a lot of money. He could buy Dr. No and “Help!” and go on rides with that much, and still have change for an ice cream, but he wasn’t sure that he should spend it, because he didn’t know where it had come from. “Cor,” he said. “Thanks, Arthur.”
“It’s Uncle Arthur to you,” said his mother.
“Yeah, remember that,” said Uncle Arthur. “Show a bit of respect for your elders and betters. And don’t spend it all on candy floss and toffee apples.”
“What about you?” Tommy asked. “Where are you going?”
“Dunno,” said Uncle Arthur. “You, Maddy?”
“You know I hate being called that,” his mother said. Her name, Tommy knew, was Madeleine, and she didn’t like it being shortened.
“Sorry,” said Uncle Arthur with a cheeky grin.
“Do you know, I wouldn’t mind taking the tram all the way along the seafront to the end of the line and back,” she said, then giggled. “Isn’t that silly?”
“Not at all,” said Uncle Arthur. “That sounds like a lot of fun. Give me a few minutes. I’ve just got to get a shave first.”
“And comb your hair,” said Tommy’s mother.
“Now, don’t be a nag,” said Uncle Arthur, wagging his finger. “Maybe we’ll see if we can call in at one of them there travel agents too, while we’re out.”
“Arthur!” Tommy’s mother looked alarmed.
“What? Oh, don’t worry.” He got up and tousled Tommy’s hair. “I’m off for a shave, then. You’ll have to do that yourself one day, you know,” he said, rubbing his dark stubble against Tommy’s cheek.
Tommy pulled away. “I know,” he said. “Can I go now? I’ve finished my breakfast.”
“We’ll all go,” said his mother. And they went up to their rooms. Tommy took a handkerchief from his little suitcase and put it in his pocket, because he really was starting to sniffle a bit now, made sure he had his badge and the money Uncle Arthur had given him, then went back into the corridor. Uncle Arthur was standing there, waiting and whistling, freshly shaven, hair still sticking up. For a moment, Tommy felt a shiver of fear ripple up his spine. Had Uncle Arthur realized that someone had been in his room and rummaged through his stuff, found the money and the gun?
Uncle Arthur grinned. “Women,” he said, gesturing with his thumb toward Tommy’s mother’s door. “One day you’ll know all about them.”
“Sure. One day I’ll know everything,” muttered Tommy. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket to blow his nose, and it snagged on the plastic wallet, sending his badge flying to the floor.
“What’s this, then?” said Uncle Arthur, bending down to pick it up.
“Give me it back!” said Tommy, panicking, reaching out for the wallet.
But Uncle Arthur raised his arm high, out of Tommy’s reach. “I said, what have we got here?”
“It’s nothing,” Tommy said. “It’s mine. Give it to me.”
“Mind your manners.”
“Please.”
Uncle Arthur opened the wallet, looked at the badge, and looked at Tommy. “A police badge,” he said. “Like father, like son, eh? Is that it?”
“I told you it was mine,” Tommy said, desperately snatching. “You leave it alone.”
But Uncle Arthur had pulled the badge out of its transparent-plastic covering. “It’s not real, you know,” he said.
“Yes, it is,” Tommy said. “Give us it back.”
“It’s made of plastic,” said Uncle Arthur. “Where did you get it?”
“I found it. On the beach. Give it to me.”
“I told you, it’s just plastic,” said Uncle Arthur. And to prove his point, he dropped the badge on the floor and stepped on it. The badge splintered under his foot. “See?”
At that moment, Tommy’s mother came out of her room, ready to go. “What’s happening?” she said, seeing Tommy practically in tears.
“Nothing,” said Uncle Arthur, stepping toward the stairs. He gave Tommy a warning look. “Is there, lad? Let’s go, love. Our carriage awaits.” He laughed.
Tommy’s mother gave a nervous giggle, then bent and pecked Tommy on the cheek. He felt her soft hair touch his face and smelled her perfume. It made him feel dizzy. He held back his tears. “You’ll be all right, son?” She hadn’t seen the splintered badge, and he didn’t want her to. It might bring back too many painful memories for her.
He nodded. “You go,” he said. “Have a good time.”
“See you later.” His mother gave a little wave and tripped down the stairs after Uncle Arthur. Tommy looked down at the floor. The badge was in four pieces on the lino. He bent and carefully picked them up. Maybe he could mend it, stick it together somehow, but it would never be the same. This was a bad sign. With tears in his eyes, he put the pieces back in the plastic wallet, returned it to his pocket, and followed his mother and Uncle Arthur outside to make sure they got on the tram before he went to do what he had to do.
“YOU READY YET, Tommy?”
“Just a minute, Phil,” Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Burford shouted over his shoulder at DI Craven. He was walking on the beach — the hard, wet sand where the waves licked in and almost washed over his shoes — and DI Craven, his designated driver, was waiting patiently on the prom. Tommy’s stomach was churning, the way it always did before a big event, and today, 13 July, 2006, he was about to receive a Police Bravery Award.
If it had been one of his men, he would have called it folly, not bravery. He had thrown himself at a man holding a hostage at gunpoint, convinced in his bones, in his every instinct, that he could disarm the man before he hurt the hostage. He had succeeded, receiving for his troubles only a flesh wound on his
shoulder and a ringing in his ears that lasted three days. And the bravery award. At his rank, he shouldn’t even have been at the hostage-taking scene — he should have been in a cubicle, catching up on paperwork or giving orders over the police radio — but paperwork had always bored him, and he sought out excitement whenever he had the chance. Now he walked with the salt spray blowing through his hair, trying to control his churning bowels just because he had to stand up in front of a crowd and say a few words.
Tommy did what he usually did on such occasions and took the old plastic wallet out of his pocket as he stood and faced the gray waves. The wallet was cracked and faded with time, and there was a tear reaching almost halfway up the central crease. Inside, behind the transparent cover, was a police badge made out of plastic. It had been broken once and was stuck together with glue and Sellotape. Most of the silver had worn off over the years, and it was now black in places. The crown and cross had broken off the top, but the words were still clearly visible in the central circle: METROPOLITAN POLICE curved around ER. Elizabeth Regina. “Our queen,” as his father had once said so proudly.
In the opposite side of the wallet was a yellowed newspaper clipping from July 1965, forty-one years ago. It flapped in the breeze, and Tommy made sure he held on to it tightly as he read the familiar words:
Schoolboy Foils Robbers
A thirteen-year-old schoolboy’s sense of honor and duty led to the arrest of Arthur Leslie Marsden in the murder of PC Brian Burford during the course of a payroll robbery last August. Five other men and one woman were also arrested and charged in the swoop, based on evidence and information given by the boy at a Blackpool police station. Also arrested were Madeleine Burford, widow of the deceased constable, named as Marsden’s lover and source of inside information; Len Fraser, driver of the getaway car; John Jarrow . . .
Tommy knew it by heart, all the names, all the details. He also remembered the day he had walked into the police station, showed his badge to the officer at the front desk, and told him all about the contents of Uncle Arthur’s holdall. It had taken a while, a bit of explaining, but in the end the desk sergeant had let him in, and the plainclothes detectives had shown a great deal of interest in what he had to say. They accompanied him to the boardinghouse and found the holdall in its hiding place. After that, they soon established that the gun was the same one used to shoot his father. The gang had been lying low, waiting for the heat to die down before daring to use any large quantities of the money — a year, they had agreed — and they had been too stupid to get rid of the gun. The only fingerprints on it were Uncle Arthur’s, and the five hundred pounds it was resting on was just a little spending money to be going on with.
The one thing the newspaper article didn’t report was that the “boy” was Tommy Burford, only son of Brian and Madeleine Burford. That came out later, of course, at the trial, but at the time, the authorities had done everything within their power to keep his name out of it. Every time he read the story over again, Tommy’s heart broke just a little more. Throwing himself at gunmen, tackling gangs armed with hammers and chains, and challenging rich and powerful criminals never came close to making the pain go away; it took the edge off for only a short while, until the adrenaline wore off.
His mother. Christ, he had never known. Never even suspected. She had been only twenty-nine at the time, for crying out loud, not much more than a girl herself, married too young to a man she didn’t love — for the sake of their forthcoming child — and bored with her life. She wanted romance and all the nice things his father couldn’t give her on a policeman’s wage, the life she saw portrayed on posters, in magazines, at the pictures, and on television, and Arthur Marsden had walked into her life and offered them all, for a price.
Of course Tommy’s father had talked about his job. He had been excited about being chosen for the special assignment and had told both his wife and his son all about it. How was Tommy to know that his mother had passed on the information to Marsden, who was already her lover, and that he and his gang had done the rest? Tommy knew he had seen her with Uncle Arthur before his father’s death, and he wished he had said something. Too late now.
Whether the murder of Tommy’s father had ever been part of the master plan or was simply an unforeseen necessity, nobody ever found out. Uncle Arthur and Tommy’s mother never admitted anything at the trial. But Tommy remembered the look his mother gave him that day when he came back to the Newbiggins’ boardinghouse with the two plainclothes policemen. She came out of the lounge as they entered the hall, and it was as if she knew immediately what had happened, that it was all over. She gave Tommy a look of such deep and infinite sadness, loss, and defeat that he knew he would take it with him to his grave.
“Tom, we’d better hurry up or we’ll be late!” called DI Craven from the prom.
“Coming,” said Tom. He folded up the newspaper clipping and put it away. Then, brushing his hands across his eyes, which had started watering in the salt wind, he turned away from the sea and walked toward the waiting car, thinking how right they had all been back then, when they said he was young for his age and knew nothing about girls.
Contact and Cover
By Greg Rucka
When it was my turn, it was a son of a bitch coming at my head with a bottle of Widmer Brothers Drop Top Amber Ale while two of his drunken friends cheered him on.
The drunk swung from the outside, sidearm style, like he was throwing a slider at the plate. If he’d been swinging it like a bat, I’d have been able to step back and out of the way. But the guy went with the changeup and at the last second released the bottle from his hand. It hit me just below the left eye, high on the cheek, shooting pain through the bone and bursting light through my head.
I didn’t drop. I staggered, but I did not drop, no matter what Morrison told his buddies later. I fell back against the car, sure, and I could hear the drunk calling me a bitch, and it sounded like he was at the bottom of a nearby well when he did it. My vision was spinning out of control, beer somehow up my nose and down my shirt all at once. I needed a hand on the spotlight to keep from going down, but in the end, I kept my feet.
Which turned out to be a very good thing, because when I finally found my vision again, what I was seeing was the drunk with a fresh bottle, this one unopened, winding up for another pitch. I lurched out of the way, shouting for Morrison to back me up. Even though I was slow and sluggish, the drunk was worse because he was a drunk. The shot missed, the bottle exploding against the side of my cruiser.
The drunk’s friends had stopped cheering, maybe realizing that they’d graduated from drunk and disorderly to assaulting a police officer. I was swearing at both Morrison and the drunk, but the drunk was the only one answering me. Apparently, I reminded him of his ex-wife. He didn’t like her very much either.
My stick was still on my belt, along with all my other non-lethals, but I just reached out and met the back of his neck with one hand, and the back of his right knee with my foot. He didn’t know I was coming, and the takedown worked just the way it was supposed to. He hit the parking lot hard, and it didn’t do his face any good, I guess, but then he hadn’t done mine any either.
Then I had my cuffs on him, shouting at Morrison to please, in the name of God and all that was holy, give me some fucking cover.
THE EMTS MADE me go to the hospital. By the time I’d been x-rayed and told that, yes, I probably had the concussion I thought I had, and made it back to the North Precinct, the third shift was just short of changing. I got out of uniform and showered the stink of the beer off me, put on my regular clothes, and went in search of an open desk to do my write-up. Halfway down the hall, I ran into Morrison coming out of the men’s locker room.
“What the hell was that?” I asked him.
“Thought you could handle it.” Morrison shrugged, something he liked to do because it showed the world that he had broad shoulders. “Big dyke like you, I figured you were all over it.”
“It’s
called ‘contact and cover,’ you asshole.” I stressed the word “cover” and not the word “asshole.” “Remember how that works? One officer makes contact, the other officer provides cover. You were supposed to provide me cover.”
Morrison rolled his eyes. “Don’t be such a baby, Hoffman. So you got a little wet, a little knocked around. I know half a dozen guys who take it worse every night, they don’t complain.”
“Then you know half a dozen guys with fractured skulls. He should never have gotten that second throw. You were doing your job, he wouldn’t have.”
“You should hear yourself,” Morrison said, moving past me. “Everybody’s fault but your own.”
“You were my cover, damn it!”
He was walking away then, and without looking back at me, he said, “If you can’t handle it, Hoffman, you shouldn’t be on the job.”
I WAS TWO days off, and by the afternoon of the second day, the bruise on my cheek had blossomed fully, the headache had gone away and I’d reached out to both Jen Schaeffer and Sophie Gault. They were each willing to get together, but it took another day to arrange everything with the shifts we were all working, so it wasn’t until the end of the week that the three of us were actually able to meet.
We got together at Mother’s for breakfast. Sophie arrived last, because she’d just come off shift in the North and had to change and fight the morning traffic back to downtown. We’d just had the first rain since July, and after two months of good weather, it always seemed that everyone in Portland forgot how to drive on wet roads.
“Jesus, Tracy,” Sophie said when she saw my face. “You could at least put a base down over it or something.”
“Doesn’t embarrass me, why should it embarrass you?” I asked her, but I knew the reason. Of the three of us, Sophie was by far the prettiest, and working hard to stay that way. Patrol makes the best of us expand, and despite my best efforts, I’d added at least ten pounds to my frame in the two years I’d been an officer with the Portland Police Bureau. I liked to think I carried it well and that I was the only one who noticed. I also liked to believe that one day the U.S.A. men’s team would win the World Cup, so I had pretty much accepted that I lived part of my life in denial.