Kelly snapped the hairband off her wrist and on to her hand, tying back her hair. It was slightly too short; the consequences of a regretted crop in August, when a fortnight-long heatwave had made it seem like a good idea to lose the heavy curtain of hair she’d had down to her waist since her student days. Two dark strands fell instantly forward again. It had taken two hours to process Carl Bayliss in the end, after discovering he was wanted on a couple of theft allegations as well as the Fail to Appear. Kelly yawned. She was almost beyond hunger now, although she had looked hopefully in the kitchen when she got in, just in case. Nothing. She should have stopped off for that kebab, after all. She made herself some toast and took it to her ground-floor bedroom. It was a large, square room with a high ceiling and walls painted white above the picture rail. Beneath it Kelly had painted the walls pale grey, covering the past-its-best carpet with two huge rugs she’d bought at an auction. The rest of the room – the bed, the desk, the red armchair she was currently sitting on – was pure Ikea, the modern lines contrasting with the sweep of the bay window into which her bed was pushed.
She flicked through the copy of Metro she’d picked up on her way home. Lots of Kelly’s colleagues never looked at the local papers – bad enough we have to see the scumbags at work; I don’t want to bring them home with me – but Kelly had an insatiable appetite for them. Breaking news bulletins scrolled constantly across the screen on her iPhone, and when she visited her parents, who had moved out of London to retire in Kent, she loved to scour the village newsletter with its appeals for committee members and complaints about litter and dog mess.
She found what she was looking for on page five, in a double-page spread headed ‘Underground Crime Soars’: City Hall chiefs launch an investigation into crime on public transport, after record increases in reported sexual offences, violent assaults and thefts.
The article opened with a paragraph rammed with terrifying crime statistics – enough to stop you using the Tube altogether, Kelly thought – before leading into a series of case studies, designed to illustrate the types of crime most prevalent on London’s busy transport network. Kelly glanced at the section on violent assaults, illustrated with a photograph of a young man with a distinctive pattern shaved into the side of his head. The teenager’s right eye was almost invisible beneath a black and purple swelling that made him look deformed.
The attack on Kyle Matthews was violent and unprovoked, read the caption. That needed taking with a pinch of salt, Kelly thought. Granted, she didn’t know Kyle, but she knew the symbol shaved into his head, and ‘unprovoked’ wasn’t a term usually associated with its wearers. Still, she supposed she should give him the benefit of the doubt.
The photo accompanying the section on sexual assaults was in shadow; the profile of a woman just visible. Stock photo, the label said. Names have been changed.
Unbidden, another newspaper article appeared in Kelly’s head; a different city, a different woman, the same headline.
She swallowed hard; moved on to the final case study, smiling at the face pulled by the woman in the photograph.
‘You’re not going to make me do a Daily Mail sad face, are you?’ Cathy Tanning had asked the photographer.
‘Of course not,’ he’d said cheerily. ‘I’m going to make you do a Metro sad face, tinged with a spot of outrage. Pop your handbag on your lap and try to look as though you’ve come home to find your husband in bed with the window cleaner.’
The British Transport Police press officer hadn’t been able to attend, so Kelly had volunteered to stay with Cathy for the interview, to which the woman had been quick to agree.
‘You’ve been great,’ she told Kelly, ‘it’s the least I can do.’
‘Save the compliments for when we find the guy who stole your keys,’ Kelly had said, privately thinking the chances were slim. She’d been coming to the end of a month-long secondment to the Dip Squad when the job came in, and she’d taken to Cathy Tanning immediately.
‘It’s my fault,’ the woman had said, as soon as Kelly had introduced herself. ‘I work such long hours, and my journey home is so long, it’s too tempting to go to sleep. It never occurred to me someone would take advantage of it.’
Kelly thought Cathy Tanning had got away lightly. The offender had rifled through her bag while she leaned against the wall of the carriage, fast asleep, but he hadn’t found her wallet, zipped into a separate compartment, or her phone, tucked into another. Instead he’d pulled out her keys.
‘It’s not your fault,’ Kelly had reassured her. ‘You have every right to grab forty winks on your way home.’ Kelly had filled out a crime report and seized the CCTV, and when she’d picked up the call from the press office later that day, Cathy had seemed like the obvious choice for an Underground crime poster girl. Kelly scanned the copy for her own quote, noticing she’d been referred to as DC rather than PC. That would piss off a few people at work.
Cathy is just one of the hundreds of commuters and tourists who fall victim each year to thefts from bags and coat pockets. We would urge passengers to be extra-vigilant and to report anything suspicious to a British Transport Police officer.
Kelly carefully cut out the article for Cathy, and sent her a text message to thank her once again for helping out. Her job phone was switched off in her locker at work, but she’d written down her personal mobile number in case Cathy needed to get hold of her.
Kelly was still in half-blues – a civvy fleece pulled over a white shirt denuded of its tie and epaulettes – and she bent down to unlace her boots. Some of her old school friends were going out for drinks and had invited Kelly to join them, but she was up at five in the morning and there was no fun in being sober on a Friday night. Toast, Netflix, tea and bed, she thought. Rock and roll.
Her phone rang and she brightened when she saw her sister’s name flash up on the screen.
‘Hey, how are you? I haven’t spoken to you in ages!’
‘Sorry, you know what it’s like. Listen, I’ve found the perfect thing for Mum’s Christmas present, but it’s a bit more than we’d usually spend – do you want to come in with us?’
‘Sure. What is it?’ Kelly kicked off one boot, then the other, only half listening to her twin sister’s description of the vase she’d seen at a craft fair. They were halfway through November; it was weeks until Christmas. Kelly suspected she had been born without the shopping gene, always leaving things to the last minute and secretly enjoying the fevered atmosphere in the malls on Christmas Eve, filled with harassed men panic-buying over-priced perfume and lingerie.
‘How are the boys?’ she interrupted, when it was obvious Lexi was about to move on to suggest presents for the rest of the family.
‘They’re great. Well, a pain in the neck, half the time, obviously, but great. Alfie’s settled in to school brilliantly, and Fergus seems to have a good time at nursery, judging by the state of his clothes at the end of the day.’
Kelly laughed. ‘I miss them.’ Lexi and her husband Stuart were only in St Albans, but Kelly didn’t see them nearly as much as she’d like.
‘So come over!’
‘I will, I promise, as soon as I get some time off. I’ll check my duties and text you some dates. Maybe Sunday lunch sometime?’ Lexi’s roasts were legendary. ‘I think I’ve got a few rest days together at the start of December, if you don’t mind me crashing on your sofa?’
‘Brilliant. The boys love it when you stay over. Although not the third – I’ve got a reunion to go to.’
The almost imperceptible hesitation, and Lexi’s subsequent deliberately casual tone told Kelly precisely what the reunion was for, and where it would be held.
‘A reunion at Durham?’
There was silence at the other end of the phone, and Kelly imagined her sister nodding, her jaw jutting forward the way it always did in anticipation of an argument.
‘Freshers of 2005,’ Lexi said brightly. ‘I doubt I’ll recognise half of them, although of course I’m still in touch with Abbie and Dan, and I see Moshy from time to time. I can’t believe it’s been ten years, it feels like ten minutes. Mind you—’
‘Lexi!’
Her sister stopped talking, and Kelly tried to find the right words.
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea? Won’t it …’ she screwed up her eyes, wishing she was having this conversation in person, ‘bring everything up?’ She sat forward, on the edge of the chair, and waited for her sister to speak. She touched the half heart at her throat, suspended on its silver thread, and wondered if Lexi still wore hers. They’d bought them that autumn, just before they went off to uni. Kelly down to Brighton, and Lexi to Durham. It was the first time they’d been apart for longer than a night or two since they’d been born.
When Lexi eventually answered, it was in the same measured tone she had always used with her sister. ‘There’s nothing to bring up, Kelly. What happened, happened. I can’t change it, but it doesn’t have to define me.’ Lexi had always been the calm one, the sensible one. The two sisters were theoretically identical, but no one had ever struggled to tell them apart. They had the same squared-off chin, the same narrow nose and dark brown eyes, but where Lexi’s face was relaxed and easy-going, Kelly’s was stressed and short-tempered. They had tried to switch places many times as children, but no one who knew them was ever fooled.
‘Why shouldn’t I celebrate the good times I had at uni?’ Lexi was saying. ‘Why shouldn’t I be able to walk round the campus like the rest of my friends, remembering the nights out we had, the lectures, the stupid jokes we played on each other?’
‘But—’
‘No, Kelly. If I had left after it happened – changed uni like you and Mum wanted me to do – he’d have won. And if I don’t go to this reunion because I’m scared of the memories it might drag up, well, he’ll be winning again.’
Kelly realised she was shaking. She put her feet flat on the floor and leaned forward, pressing her forearm over her knees to keep them still. ‘I think you’re mad. I wouldn’t go anywhere near that place.’
‘Well, you’re not me, are you?’ Lexi exhaled sharply, doing nothing to mask her frustration. ‘Anyone would think it was you it happened to, not me.’
Kelly said nothing. How could she explain to Lexi that was exactly how it had felt, without implying her trauma was somehow on a par with Lexi’s own? She remembered the session delivered at police college by someone from Occupational Health. They had worked through a case study of a pile-up on the M25; dozens injured, six killed. Who had post-traumatic stress disorder? The trainer wanted them to guess. The Highways Officers, who had been first to the scene? The traffic sergeant, who had to comfort the mother of two dead children? The lorry driver, whose lapse of concentration had caused the devastation?
None of them.
It was the off-duty police officer whose daily run took him over the motorway bridge; who witnessed the whole thing happen and called it in, delivering essential information to control room, but ultimately powerless to stop the tragedy unfolding beneath him. That’s who developed PTSD. Who blamed himself for not doing more. That’s who ended up retiring through ill health; who became a recluse. The bystander.
‘Sorry,’ she said instead. She heard Lexi sigh.
‘It’s okay.’
It wasn’t, and they both knew it, but neither of them wanted to fall out. The next time they spoke, Lexi would talk about the plans for Christmas, and Kelly would say how great work was, and they would pretend everything was okay.
Just like they’d done for the last ten years.
‘How’s work?’ Lexi asked, as though she could read Kelly’s mind.
‘Okay. Same old, you know.’ She tried to sound upbeat, but Lexi wasn’t fooled.
‘Oh, Kel, you need a new challenge. Have you thought any more about reapplying for a specialist unit? They can’t hold it against you for ever.’
Kelly wasn’t so sure. Her departure four years ago from British Transport Police’s Sexual Offences Unit had been rapid and uncomfortable. She had spent nine months off sick, returning to what had been presented to her as a clean slate, but was really a punishment posting. Kelly had thrown herself into shift work, quickly becoming one of the most respected officers on the Neighbourhood Policing Team; pretending to herself she was a uniform cop through and through, when every day she yearned to be dealing with serious investigations again.
‘The attachment you’ve just done must have helped.’ Lexi was persistent. ‘Surely now the bosses can see you’re no longer—’ She stopped abruptly, obviously unsure how to summarise the time Kelly had spent off work, unable to leave the flat without breaking into a sweat.
‘I’m fine where I am,’ Kelly said shortly. ‘I need to go – there’s someone at the door.’
‘Come and see us soon – promise?’
‘I promise. Love you, sis.’
‘Love you too.’
Kelly ended the call and sighed. She had so enjoyed her three-month attachment on the Dip Squad, the unit dedicated to tackling the huge number of pickpockets operating on the London Underground. It wasn’t the kudos of being in plain clothes – although after four years in uniform it had been a welcome change – it was the feeling of actually making a real difference; of making a dent in a crime wave affecting so many people in the city. Since Kelly had joined the job, more and more specialist units had been created: all the serious crimes were now hived off to squads; leaving the Neighbourhood Policing Teams with little more than by-law breaches and antisocial behaviour. Kelly had been back in uniform for a week, and apart from Carl Bayliss’s, the only collars she’d fingered had belonged to kids with their trainers on the seats, and the usual Friday-night drunks barging through the barriers and turning the air blue. Was she ready to go back on to a specialist squad? Kelly thought she was, but when she had broached the idea with her inspector, his answer had been short and to the point.
‘People have long memories in this job, Kelly. You’re considered too much of a risk.’ He’d given her the Dip Squad attachment as a consolation prize; a step up from shift, but with little risk of becoming emotionally involved. He had intended it to satisfy Kelly, but all it had done was remind her what she was missing.
Lexi was right; she needed to move on.