CHAPTER 24
Our next shifts were lates, and we decided, after the delights of New Year’s Eve, we deserved a bit of a break, so we parked up in Splott once more.

“What’s got you so bouncy, Jen?”

“Um, stuff”

“What sort of stuff?”

“Sort of personal stuff”

“Ah! You rang that woman, didn’t you?”

“Er, might have done”

He burst out laughing, then grinned at me, happiness all over his expression.

“It went well, then. That wasn’t a question”

“Not going to ask for details, Jen, and trust me, I REALLY don’t want them. You, well, what’s that phrase? Took your friendship to another level?”

“Um. Yes”

“Jen?”

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know, Tom”

I talked through the banter with Lil and Amina, with him cackling at the bit about ‘the next meal’.

“So Hira dropped us off, and, well, yeah”

“Yeah?”

“Oh god yeah”

I tried to round up my thoughts, which had scattered like worried sheep.

“I… Tom?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I be a bit personal?”

“We’re a team, woman”

“Well, yes, I know. Or maybe I should try and remember that. It was…”

I paused, steadying myself for my confession.

“Christmas was shit for me, butt”

“You seemed fine when we dropped round”

“That was the thing, Tom. You dropped round. Up to then, it had been shit”

“You… Lonely, Jen?”

“Shit, aye. I was all excited getting my own place, no longer just that single room, but…”

“It’s still just you?”

“Exactly. I woke up, and she was still there, and we had breakfast together, and she’s still there, and then she’s away to get ready for work, and the sheets, the dishes, she’s still there, and she’s coming back. You and Connie, Tom: I was so, so envious”

“I hadn’t realised it was that bad, Jen. Sorry”

“That’s the point now, Tom. It isn’t, not any more. And I’m sitting in a little sort of bright spot, wondering is it can last”

“Hang on, Jen, sorry. Go ahead Central”

He listened through his earpiece for a second.

“We’re in Splott, and yes I know you know. I’ll drive round”

He turned back to me,

“Anonymous call, Jen. Child, apparently”

“Fuck!”

“Just round the corner. Give me a minute”

We parked up not far from where I realised was Angela’s flat, and as soon as I had the van door open, a woman in a stupidly short skirt and a mane of unnaturally red hair emerged from an alley.

“In here, woman”

There was a young girl just out of sight from the street, in an equally short shimmery dress, one single heeled shoe in her hand and the marks of a serious beating all over her face. The tom’s voice was softer by far than it had been for me.

“Want me to tell the doc here what happened, Maisie?”

The… girl nodded. There was something just a little off about her.

“Maisie here’s been fucking stupid, doc”

“I’m a paramedic, not a doctor. Same with Tom there. What do we have?”

“Kid who thought she could piss about at the game. Only do French, aye?”

“Ah”

“Gets a punter, he decides he wants a bit more. So Maisie here ends up with a kick in the bollocks”

Everything clicked. Keep it sweet, Jennifer.

“Come and take a seat in our wagon, Maisie. Out of the weather, aye? Talk me through it please…”

“Will you have to tell my parents?”

“What I’m about to ask is not a threat, Maisie. I just need a clear picture, okay? Are you a runaway?”

She waggled a hand.

“Sort of kicked out, sort of escaped”

“Right. You’re how old?”

“Sixteen”

Gillick competence, then? Do the basic stuff as you talk, ‘Doc’.

“Can I be really personal?”

“Course. Not exactly got a choice, like this”

“You a trans girl?”

A tired nod.

“You a trans woman?”

I forced a laugh, as Tom walked away from the back door.

“No, I have a thing called polycystic ovaries. Affects my hormone balance, and makes me, well, look this way”

“Sorry!”

“Don’t worry, Maisie. Now, please tell me where you were hit, and what with”

“Oh, two punches to my face, then he dragged me out of the car, kicked me between the legs when I fell over”

“Did you hit your head at all?”

“No. Just his punches. I think he was going to kick me in the head, but Moira there, and Posh, they started screaming at him, and Moira had a brick, said she’d do his car if he didn’t fuck off”

“Can I please see between your legs?”

As she slid down a pair of what I could only describe as ‘junior granny knickers’, she quietly started to weep. In the end, what was there looked bruised, not burst.

“Who called us, Maisie?”

“Moira. She has a cheap phone. Says it’s her owner’s leash”

I could find nothing nasty lurking there, but she really needed to go to St Dai’s, just to be safe. As soon as I said this, she started to panic. I was halfway through the usual arguments when Tom stuck his head in the back door.

“Let her walk, Jen. Please”

“You sure?”

He let me see the phone he was concealing from the child.

“I am. Come on, love; ladies are waiting”

He led her over to what had to be Moira and Posh, before settling himself back into the driver’s seat.

“What are you doing, butt?”

“Just parking up over there, Jen. Hang on”

As soon as he had switched off the engine, he turned to me, holding up his phone.

“Got all that about being a runaway, Jen. I rang Paul for advice”

“She’s trans, Tom”

“I heard. I also know a few secrets, one in particular that Paul’s in on. Expecting him in a few minutes”

Five minutes after I had let the kid walk away, a white Transit pulled up, and three people emerged, one being Paul, in a civvy jacket. The second was a slim young woman with more hair than should be legal, in dark curls, and the third was Debbie from the Smugglers. There was a discussion I couldn’t hear between the two prostitutes and Debbie, the slim woman helped Maisie into the front of the van, Paul climbed in the back, and they were away, just as Posh walked over to a car and leant into the open passenger window before opening the door and climbing in.

What a fucking life.

“Jen?”

“Yeah?”

“Paul works with Debbie as well. She runs a shelter. He says he’s going to get her settled, off the street, safe, aye? Then call out the Force Medical Examiner to tick his own boxes. I texted him your assessment. Sorry, but I didn’t want to panic her”

“She’s a boy, Tom”

“No, love. She’s a girl with some extra problems. That is who Debbie runs the shelter for, and no: I don’t know where it is, nor do I want to, but if we get any others like that girl, just remember to feed it through Paul”

“Is she trying to make up for something, Paul?”

“I really don’t know, Jen”

“She’s very driven”

I talked him through our conversation in the Smugglers, particularly her comment about having a nasty early life, and he simply nodded in recognition.

“Not one to pull the ladder up behind her, then. I think you can expect a message from that biker friend of yours, next time you see her”

“Elf? Oh; of course”

“Just need to confirm we’ve closed this job off, Jen”

He rang Central, confirmed we had cleared the casualty, adding in a nod to the FME’s role to clear our side of it, then muttered ‘Shit’ almost under his breath.

“Sorry, Central. On way; ETA about five minutes”

I was already clicking in my seatbelt.

“Another fight, Jen. Outside Central Station. Police are there; try not to get another shiner”

It was a nasty one, and we ended up checking a few coppers over as well, one of whom had been caught in the edge of the cloud produced by his colleague’s pepper spray. Gary and Shona had joined us, followed by Annette and Carole, so the workload was manageable. Something kept catching my eye as I worked on some scrote who’d met another scrote who had liked playing with bits of the rubble that littered the building site opposite the station, say goodbye to a few teeth, sonny, but I couldn’t work out what the distraction was until I finally had a moment to look.

It was a small light moving around on the scaffolding, and I understood immediately. Someone had decided to use their phone to record events for shits and giggles, or social media clicks, or just stupidity, but they were around thirty feet up, and given the state of my scrote, they were probably a bloody long way from sobriety.

“Sergeant Gould!”

He turned, I pointed, and the light fell, first a couple of feet as it landed on the scaffolding planks, then all the way as the idiot knocked it all the way clear. Both of us watched as he tried to grab it.

The noise his head made was not something I would ever wish to hear again. There was another inquest.