I don’t dwell on it as I coast down the road to work, though. I’m focused on holding my head as high as I can when I walk back through those doors into the office.
Detective Chief Inspector Corinne Fraser doesn’t look any different from when I last saw her, months ago: gray eyes, frizzy slate-colored hair only partially tamed by a severe bob cut, and a gaze as penetrating as a brain scan. She gets up from her desk and gives me a warm, two-handed handshake, but wishes me luck in a tone that makes it clear that I’ve got work to do to regain her trust. It’s a welcome back, but an unnerving one. It’s vintage Fraser.
My other colleagues greet me nicely enough. Mostly it’s in a hail-fellow-well-met sort of way that feels pretty genuine, though one or two of them don’t hold eye contact for as long as they might. There’s no shame, Dr. Manelli once said, in what happened to me, in the fact that I flipped my lid publicly, but I reckon some of my colleagues might be feeling it on my behalf. I try not to take it personally. That’s their problem, I tell myself. My job is to prove how good a detective I am.
It’s during “Morning Prayers,” her daily briefing meeting, that Fraser hands me the Feeder Canal case. I get the feeling she’s glad to have some poor soul to allocate it to. Its priority level is made clear by the fact that it’s the last item on the agenda before a housekeeping request that we make an effort to reuse the plastic cups at the water cooler.
Fraser asks a familiar face to précis the details of the case for me.
Detective Constable Justin Woodley throws a half-smile my way and clears his throat before reading from his notepad. I haven’t had much to do with him since he witnessed me throwing up into the front garden of a major witness on the Ben Finch case. It was a humiliating reaction to a bit of bad news.
Water under the bridge, I tell myself. Hold your nerve. I nod back.
“A fifteen-year-old boy fell into the canal last night, just down the road from here by the scrapyard. He was fished out by emergency services and they took him to the Children’s Hospital. He’s in very bad shape currently, in intensive care and in critical condition. He was with another lad who was found canal-side. Not injured, but in shock, and he’s being checked over at the Royal Infirmary.”
“And they want someone from CID because . . . ?”
“There’s a witness. She says she thought there was some funny business going on between the lads before the fall into the canal. She’s the one who called it in. She’s still at the scene.”
“What does the lad who wasn’t injured say?”
“He’s not spoken to anybody yet.”
“Why not?”
“He’s just not speaking, apparently. Whether it’s can’t speak or won’t speak, we don’t know.”
Woodley flips his pad closed.
“I believe the victim’s a white boy, and the other kid is from the Somali community, so sensitivity is paramount,” Fraser chips in.
“Of course,” I say.
Fraser continues: “I’m sure it won’t surprise you to hear that budget is tight to nonexistent, so I’m not going to press the investigation button on this one unless there’s very good reason to. If we can put it to bed easily, then let’s do that and let uniform handle it. Jim, you and Woodley will be working together on this.”
Fleeting eye contact tells me that I’m not the only one feeling nervous about that.
Woodley and I take a walk down to the scene. It’s less than half a mile up Feeder Road from Kenneth Steele House, and it’s not Bristol’s most scenic destination.
We pass beneath a stained and graffiti-tagged concrete overpass that moves four lanes of traffic from one corner of the city to another. It’s oppressive. Even on a nice day the underside is gloomy and the shadow it casts is deep.
Beyond the overpass, the properties that border the canal-side road are mostly warehouses, lockups, and the odd automotive place, and most of them have high-visibility security in the form of spiked or barbed perimeter fences.
“Does this case sound like a hospital pass to you?” Woodley asks.
“I don’t know. Depends what the witness saw. It could be something or nothing.”
“Did he jump, or was he pushed?” He makes it sound like a teaser. I forgot that Woodley had a sharp sense of humor. I find myself smiling.
“Something like that.”
Woodley clears his throat. “Full disclosure: I cocked up really badly on a case. I lost some evidence.”
I take a moment to absorb that. I guess I’m not the only one who’s walking wounded, then.
“What was the case?” It matters.
“Child abuse.”
“Did it cost you a result?”
“Yes. The dad was allowed back to his family. He was guilty as sin. My fault.”
It’s the very worst kind of case to make a mistake on.
“Happens to the best of us,” I say, though I’m sure that doesn’t reassure him at all. I’m not sure what else to say. I’m in no position to judge him, but now I understand why Fraser has us working together. We’re the last kids to get picked for the team. We’ll sink or swim together on this case.
“For what it’s worth,” he says after we’ve walked on a bit, following the canal’s path, “on the Ben Finch case I thought your work was solid. Lots of people did. You went after what you believed.”
I look at him. Nose like a ski jump, a small patch of thinning hair appearing on his scalp, and those clever eyes, searching mine for a reaction. He still wants to be a player, I think. That’s good for us both.
“Thanks. I . . .” but I don’t know what else to say; it feels too soon to be having this discussion with a colleague. I’m not ready. Woodley doesn’t push it.
Farther up, we pause at the edge of the canal to take in the scene. The water looks soupy and uninviting. Sludgy pale brown mud banks up the sides and the foliage along the water’s edge looks as if the long winter has depressed it terminally. A fisherman is huddled in wet weather gear a few hundred yards to the east.
Beside us, there’s an abandoned warehouse and a modest Victorian pedestrian bridge that spans the canal. The path across it is weed-covered and trash-strewn. Underneath a layer of black paint that’s peeling like a bad case of psoriasis, the structure looks rusty enough that it’s unlikely to last another hundred years.
Across the water, we can see the scrapyard where the incident took place.
I can’t imagine what business two teenage lads would have around here. It feels like a wasteland. They must have been mucking about. Daring each other to trespass, or looking for somewhere to sneak a drink or smoke a joint.
“I think this case is a minnow,” I say. I look into the murky water. There’s nothing to see except the legs of a shopping trolley that’s gone belly-up on the bank. “Small fry. But it’s better than traffic duty.”
In retrospect, I misinformed Woodley, because neither of us recognized this case for what it was really: menacing, strong, and smooth, perhaps not making waves at first, but able to turn on a dime and surprise you with a razor-toothed bite. This case was actually a shark.
Of course I didn’t recognize it. Nobody else had, so why should we?
Fraser would never have let us have it if she’d known better.