What I was really going to have to come to terms with, perhaps for the rest of my life, was simple. It was me who had turned Fran in.
‘What are we going to do, Mep?’ I asked as the sun started to peek through the clouds, a small ray hitting my face. It almost made me feel a fraction better, before Mep dribbled his vomit across my arm.
I decided it was time to return to the station. I left Mep at home, keeping the radio on for him, and swiftly changed my shirt to one featuring less vomit. I then drove on autopilot back to the office.
It was like the time I had shat myself in PE in primary school all over again. As I walked through the station corridors, conversations suddenly became silent, numerous pairs of eyes locking onto me and tracking my every move. I could swear I saw a few of them turn their noses up, as if they could smell that aeons-ago poop, echoing through the ages. This was the guy who not only had a murderer for a wife, but was the one who had turned her in. What a bastard.
‘Hey, Gareth,’ I heard a voice say at the end of the hall. The tone was too cheery, too fake, drenched in self-satisfaction. I had been played by her. Of course I had. I had just been too dumb, too naïve to see it.
‘Hi, Cis, how are you?’ I asked, wondering if I could get away with punching a woman that was nine times stronger than me. In my periphery, I saw everyone’s head lean towards us, trying to eavesdrop on our forced niceties.
‘Oh, not too bad. Busy as ever. I’ve missed you, haven’t seen you for a little while. How are you holding up?’
She placed a hand on my shoulder. The self-restraint it took me not to grab and violently twist it around her back was almost impressive.
Keep it together, I kept telling myself.Keep it together.
‘Oh, you know, as good as I can be under the current circumstances,’ I said, matching her artificial saccharine tone. ‘Look, I’d probably best be going, I’m dying for a cup of coffee.’ The sheer anger I felt writhing around in my gut was nauseating. I gave as warm an expression as I could muster and began to walk away.
Christ forgive me, I hated her. Like truly, deeply, all of my heart just despised her. It hadn’t helped my feelings that I had heard that, after taking most of the credit for Fran’s arrest, she had been offered the very prestigious promotion she had worked so hard for. I noticed she had changed her email password, too, so I no longer had access to her inbox. Although, luckily, I had saved a few email chains onto a spare USB just in case I needed them again.
‘Oh, and by the way, Vivian would like to see you,’ Cis said.
I didn’t wait for Vivian to summon me into the room this time, though I noticed that she was still trying her luck with the signature finger commands. A click to come in, a finger pointing downwards to sit.
I slumped down in the chair, rolling up my sleeves as she continued to read through her documents. I kept waiting for her. Her eyes tracked across the pages. I wondered what was so important that it couldn’t wait a few minutes.
I continued to tap my foot, hoping she would pick up on my impatience and that I really didn’t care for her power-play games, but she just seemed to ignore me, lifting one piece of paper aloft and blocking my face from her view.
‘Can’t that wait?’ I said, exasperated.
Shit. I should not have said that.
Her head shifted upwards, her eyes chilled, and I saw her cheeks suck sharply inwards as she clenched her jaw, every facial muscle tense.
‘What did you just say?’
I had to pick my next words very carefully.
‘This whole – you know, pretending to read documents just to keep me waiting. It’s as clear as day what you’re doing. Just stop wasting my time and get on with it.’
Double shit. Should definitely have not said that.
I could now see the anger in my boss’s face as she stretched her jaw, turned her head away from me, and stared up at the ceiling for a moment, gathering her composure.
Part of me wanted to fill in the silence with another shitty comment, but my mouth couldn’t exactly be trusted at this current time, so I just used all my internal strength to keep my gob shut.
Vivan interlocked her hands, her elbows resting on the desk, and leaned forward.
‘Gareth, I am reading a document from HR about how to deal with an employee whose significant other has been arrested,’ she said calmly. ‘They actually typed it up especially for me this morning. I have never been in this situation before, so I was just making sure I was well versed on how best to discuss this with you. I do sincerely apologise for keeping you waiting.’
‘Ah,’ I said, shuffling uncomfortably in the chair. ‘That makes sense.’
‘See?’ she said, holding up an A4 sheet of paper with the relevant subject line before slapping it back down on her desk. ‘I just wanted to ask you if you’re okay – if there’s anything we can do to support you, going forward, with your workload, or anything. If you need some time off, or some counselling?’
I pushed myself up a little on the chair, digging my nails into some of the flaking rubber in the handle.
‘I heard through the grapevine that all the way up the Met food chain, they were putting the pressure on you to make an arrest. You know, a bureaucratic fraud syndicate right under their noses would be a horrendous bit of PR for the police, considering our default public opinion is usually negative.’
