Left for Dead: A Maeve Kerrigan Novella (Maeve Kerrigan Novels) Read online

  Left for Dead

  A Maeve Kerrigan Novella

  Jane Casey

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  Excerpt from The Burning

  Also by Jane Casey

  About the Author

  Copyright

  1

  I sat in the front row of the briefing room, trying – but failing – to concentrate. The room was sweltering, airless and currently home to a slow-moving black fly that was too canny to be swatted on its long, aimless journeys above our heads. Briefing this evening was taking for ever and I was tired already, before I’d even set foot on the street. It was my own fault. I had been out during the day, getting some sun instead of some rest. It was hard to get used to the first day of a new shift pattern, and when London was baking in the heat of August I found it downright impossible to close the curtains and sleep. From the sunburnt, sleepy faces beside me and in the rows behind, I knew I wasn’t the only one.

  ‘Wake up, you lot. I feel as if I’m talking to myself up here.’ Inspector Saunders scanned the room. Around me there was a ripple of movement as everyone straightened up in their seats and adjusted their body armour. It was possible to be deployed straight from briefings so we had to be ready to hit the streets, which meant kitting up before we wedged ourselves into the flip-down seats. The inspector was straight-backed on her chair at the front of the room, flanked by the two sergeants from our team. Inspector Saunders was the only one who seemed unaffected by the heat. She was as self-contained as a cat and just as lethal. She’d already given us the crewings, telling us who we were going to be patrolling with, and our call signs, and now she was going through intelligence briefings about wanted people.

  ‘If you look on the screen behind me, you’ll see Howard Luckin. Howard is wanted on a number of warrants by Merseyside Police, including distraction burglary, fraud and vehicle theft.’ Howard’s mugshot stared at us moodily, his expression hangdog. He was white, with greying hair spread thinly over a sunburnt scalp. ‘We’ve had some reports that he’s been seen in the Brixton area recently. He’s got friends who live here and spent some time here ten years ago, so he may be hanging around.’

  I stifled a yawn, then felt guilty. When you were living out your dream, you weren’t supposed to be bored, ever, and being a police officer had been my dream for most of my life. I still couldn’t believe my luck. I liked being on the street, working response, turning up and handling whatever came over the radio. I didn’t mind the shifts – even nights, my new shift pattern, working from ten in the evening until seven the next morning. I liked most of my colleagues on Team 2, which I’d joined two months before as a probationer straight out of Hendon, even though I was still getting to know most of them. I got a kick out of putting on my uniform, lacing up my boots, fighting my hair into a bun and settling my black bowler on top of it, far down, over my eyes. I loved having a leather wallet in my pocket that flipped open to prove to the world I was PC Maeve Kerrigan, Metropolitan Police officer, shoulder number 9811LD. I walked taller in my uniform. I felt different.

  I felt right.

  ‘Come on, you lot. Last item.’ Inspector Saunders glared around the room. She was near to retirement and as old school as they came. ‘Barry, what do you look like? You’re sweating like a paedo in a paddling pool.’

  ‘Thanks, guv.’ Barry Allen was the larger kind of response officer, built for comfort not for speed, and if I was suffering in the briefing room he appeared to be melting.

  ‘The Golden Keys pub in Kenner Street, just off Coldharbour Lane, is the venue for a wake this evening. You will remember the Golden Keys from such memorable events as the night Ray got his nose broken. Now he can smell his left armpit without turning his head. Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause for Ray.’

  Ray West, whose nose did indeed have a kink in it, acknowledged the applause good-naturedly.

  ‘The gentleman being remembered is Thomas Maguire, a member of the Irish travelling community. We’ve got intel that he was involved in a feud with another family who may be keen to attend the event this evening, so be aware that there may be trouble. Mr Maguire himself was known to us for various violent offences and I’m sure we’re all very sad he’s gone.’

  ‘I’ll miss him. I arrested him two or three times. Never got a straight answer out of him about anything.’ The comment came from the back of the room and I turned to look at Gary Lovell, known to the squad as Lovely Gary, and not altogether ironically. If he’d had a couple of extra inches in height, he would have been devastating: intensely charming and handsome, with dark brown eyes and a grin that had caused me to lose my train of thought once or twice. Nature had not been kind to him though – he was five foot eight at best. Tall enough not to suffer from short man syndrome, but not tall enough for me. The three inches I had on him was hard to ignore, but that wasn’t the only reason I kept my distance. Flirting with a colleague was a complication I didn’t need. Not when I was still finding my feet in my new job.

  Inspector Saunders nodded. ‘Dead or alive, he’s likely to cause us trouble.’ She wrapped up the rest of the briefing quickly, allocating responsibility for a couple of missing persons to specific officers. She finished off with, ‘I know I’m going to sound like your mum but drink plenty of water and don’t get too hot, children. It’s going to be a warm night.’

  Along with everyone else, I peeled myself out of my seat and headed out to pick up the keys to a patrol car, if the previous shift had finished with it. I thought through the process, step by step, worried I might forget something. It didn’t come naturally to me yet. Nothing was automatic. I couldn’t even manage to take things off my heavy equipment belt without fumbling and having to look. We’d been trained to look confident and in control at all times when we were in uniform, as if we were ready to deal with anything. I hadn’t realised at the training college that it applied just as much when I was with my colleagues as when I was out on the street.

  ‘How are you doing this evening, Spud? Forget the factor fifty sunscreen, did we?’

  I knew without looking that it was one of the other probationers on the team, Andy Styles, a round-faced Essex boy with bleached tips to his ginger hair. He thought of himself as a cheeky chappy, which apparently gave him the right to pick on me. He had a month on me in the job. Putting me down was the best way to make himself look good, he’d clearly decided, as opposed to hard work. And he seemed to know which buttons to push. ‘Spud’ was one of my least favourite nicknames. I had heard too many Irish jokes during training to raise a smile about any reference to potatoes. Having a name like Maeve Kerrigan was like lugging a giant shamrock around with me. I just thanked God that I’d missed out on the red hair and freckles everyone seemed to expect from Irish girls. Grey eyes and curly dark hair was just as Irish, did they but know it. The comments I got about my appearance were generally favourable, and equally unwanted by me.

  In the meantime: Andy. The sensible thing was to keep walking and ignore him, I knew. Knowing and doing were two different things.

  ‘Don’t call me Spud,�
� I snapped.

  ‘Good mood, then.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ I kept following the broad back of Chris Curzon, the older PC who was my crewmate for the night. Chris was the most experienced response officer on the team, fiftyish and a street copper for life. As I was the most junior, it made sense that we were crewed together. I’d worked with him most of the time since joining the team. He was helpful without being patronising, and almost completely impossible to surprise. I liked him a lot.

  Andy just wouldn’t give up. ‘You’re fine? Could have fooled me.’

  ‘It doesn’t take a genius to fool you, Andy. It takes you about a day to get a knock-knock joke.’

  When he answered me, I could hear an edge in his voice that told me I’d made him angry.

  ‘I’d have thought you’d have had the night off, anyway. Compassionate leave so you can mourn for Tommy Maguire.’

  ‘I didn’t know him.’

  ‘All you paddies know one another.’

  I rolled my eyes and said nothing.

  ‘Tell me something, Maeve. Do they call you lot paddies because you’re always in a paddy?’

  I heard the suppressed laughter from behind me. I knew my ears were scarlet, giving away how I really felt. I turned and glowered at him.

  ‘No, that’s not why. People call us paddies because they’re unimaginative cocks.’

  There was a shout of laughter at that from the eight or nine other officers who were leaving the room behind us. Andy looked embarrassed as Gary Lovell patted him on the back, grinning widely.

  ‘Nice one, Maeve. That’s you told, Andy.’

  The heat of anger subsided but a glow of embarrassment made my cheeks stay warm.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Inspector Saunders barrelled through, not waiting for an answer. ‘Get a move on, little ones. Places to go. People to arrest. PC Kerrigan, a word with you before you go.’

  There was no way the inspector hadn’t heard me snapping at Andy Styles. I followed her, past the writing room where the rest of the shift were assembling to drink a last cup of tea and pick up the last bits of kit we needed – breathalysers and cameras and mobile phones so we didn’t tie up the radio network with long-winded discussions about specific jobs.

  Inspector Saunders’ office was nearby and it was as untidy as she was neat. It looked like the aftermath of an explosion in a recycling plant: every surface was covered in piles of paper, empty drinks cans, paper plates and disposable coffee cups. The inspector picked her way around to her desk.

  ‘Shut the door.’

  I did as I was told and stood by it.

  ‘This isn’t an official bit of advice, Maeve, but you need to work on toughening up. If you react to everything they throw at you, you’re going to end up too stressed to work. And I don’t want to have to go to an employment tribunal and explain why I couldn’t stop them from bothering you.’

  ‘Why can’t you?’ I couldn’t help asking.

  ‘It’s the culture. Banter is what makes the force work. It’s what binds us together. And you’re a woman, and a young one at that, so they’re going to be particularly hard on you.’ She shrugged. ‘Too bad.’

  I was wary of trying to find common ground with the inspector just because we happened to be women, but I was curious. ‘Did you have to put up with it?’

  ‘And worse.’ She opened a drawer and peered into it, looking surprised by whatever she saw in there. She shut it again. ‘There are three ways you can go, Maeve. You can be the girliest police officer that ever walked the beat. If you’re all giggly and flirty they’ll know where they stand with you. They’ll patronise you as much as they like, but that’s what you’ve got to expect. They won’t see you as a threat any more.’

  ‘That’s not very appealing.’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d like it. There’s always the other extreme: acting as if you’re more of a man than they’ll ever be, like Sam.’

  Sam Walters was built like a truck and was an out-and-proud lesbian. I’d seen members of the public struggle to work out if she was a woman or a man. If she’d been allowed to wear the traditional tall hat instead of the bowler that female officers had to wear, she’d have passed for a short but very muscular male PC. I was half her width and much taller, and butch was not something I could carry off with any conviction.

  ‘I don’t think I could do that either.’

  ‘Then you’re stuck with the third option. Be better than them. Be quicker. Be right more often than you’re wrong.’

  ‘Earn their respect?’

  She laughed. ‘You’ll never get that. But you might get accepted. You’re not looking to impress anyone here. Showing off how good you are is a shortcut to being unpopular. You just have to make yourself bulletproof. Don’t give them any opportunity to pick on you.’

  ‘Is that what you did?’

  ‘More or less. I also terrified them into leaving me alone. But to be honest, you seem to have that one covered. You just don’t want to get angry while you’re telling them off. You want to be in control. See the difference?’

  I did.

  ‘The other thing I’m going to say, and don’t get offended, is that if you sleep with any members of the team I’m going to kill you.’ There was no gleam of humour in her eyes. ‘It causes trouble. Arguments. It complicates things when I’m deciding who’s crewed with who. I can’t have all-female crews on nights so you’re going to be working with the male officers.’

  ‘I think I can control myself around Chris Curzon.’ His beard and beer-gut helped.

  ‘He’s all right, Chris. He knows how to be respectful and he’s not interested in picking up women at work. That’s why you’ve been crewed with him for nights up to now. But some of the others you need to watch. Don’t believe everything they tell you and don’t be fooled into thinking they see you as anything more than a challenge.’

  My face was burning but I nodded.

  Her face softened. ‘I’m telling you this because I’ve been in your shoes. I’ve made all the mistakes already. Do what I tell you, Maeve, and you’ll do fine. You’re going to be good at the job, once you’ve got the experience under your belt. But the personal stuff – that’ll trip you up every time.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am.’

  ‘Get going.’

  I did as I was told, catching up with Chris in the writing room where Andy Styles and Gary Lovell were talking to him. When I walked in Chris started talking very loudly about the football and who he fancied in the League this year. I knew what that meant: they’d been talking about me while I was locked away with the inspector. I gave him a look and got pure innocence in return, but I knew I’d get the truth out of him once we were in the car, if I asked. Andy scuttled out of the room without trying any more smart remarks, and Gary sauntered after him, favouring me with a long, appreciative look as he went by. I remembered Inspector Saunders’ warnings and gave him a tight-lipped smile in return.

  In the car park, Chris prowled around our patrol car, obsessively hunting for scrapes and dents. ‘Every mark, Maeve. If there’s anything that’s not recorded, we’ll get the blame.’

  ‘You will. I’m not allowed to drive yet, remember?’

  ‘When are you going to get your basic?’

  It was the qualification that police officers needed to drive patrol cars and it burned me that I didn’t have it yet. ‘I’ve put in for it. Soon.’

  ‘Test the blues and twos,’ he said, standing back while I flicked the switches that set off the siren and made the lights spin. All around us other officers were doing the same in their cars. It reminded me of an orchestra tuning up, except that the tune they were playing was a cacophony of siren noises.

  ‘Seems fine,’ I said.

  ‘Checked the back seat?’

  I nodded. I had gone over it with extreme care, making sure there was nothing there so if we arrested someone who dumped their drugs down the back of the seat we could prove they weren’t from a previous passenger.
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  ‘Got our go bag? High vis?’

  ‘All in the back.’

  ‘Filled in the log book?’

  ‘Yep.’

  The suspension rocked as Chris sat into the driver’s seat with a sigh of satisfaction. This was truly the high point of his day, when the shift stretched out before him, full of possibilities. ‘In that case, what are we waiting for? Let’s go.’

  I waited until we were clear of the nick, driving through Brixton with Chris whistling happily to himself.

  ‘What were they saying in the writing room?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About me.’

  He shook his head, still whistling.

  ‘They were talking about me. Come on. Spill it. I promise I won’t get cross.’

  His mouth was still pursed in a whistle, but the tune had died.

  ‘Don’t be scared, Chris. You know I won’t tell them you told me.’

  He wriggled. ‘It was nothing. They were just asking about you and your temper. I said you were always lovely.’

  ‘Thanks for that,’ I said drily. ‘What else?’

  ‘Gary wanted to know if you had a boyfriend.’

  ‘Did he, indeed?’ I tried to look unmoved but Chris was too good a police officer not to spot the colour in my face.

  ‘He was asking on Andy’s behalf, before you get too excited.’

  ‘Really? Ugh.’

  Chris laughed. ‘I thought he wasn’t your type.’

  ‘No. Very much not.’

  ‘He’s all right. Bit of a lad. You shouldn’t take him seriously.’

  ‘He’s sexist, and racist, and a loudmouth. He’s been feeling around, trying to hit a nerve since I started. One of these days he’s going to get told.’

  ‘He fancies you.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t. That’s ridiculous.

  Chris’s expression was avuncular. ‘He does, I’m afraid. You’ll have to let him down gently if you’re not interested.’

  ‘I’m not, obviously. I just want to do my job.’ I shook my head. ‘Why does everyone seem to think I joined the police to meet men?’