Chapter 5
I could barely speak as I made my way back to the station. The shock of seeing my sister after all those years had completely knocked me senseless. I stood and watched from afar as she finally climbed into the car with the young man and they drove off together, before I started the walk back to work. I wondered if there was any way I could get into Hunt's scotch. I needed something for my nerves.
That was the part of that world I found so hard to deal with – seeing old faces, people I knew from so long ago except the way they used to be.
As I walked back my mind went over and over what happened to my family in 95, the first time around. It almost tore us to pieces. I don't know how we survived it. I was seventeen going on eighteen when she disappeared; Julia, my older sister. I suppose I'd never really gotten to know her as well as I should have done. She was three years older than I was and always kind of distant. I always felt as though there was something hiding behind her eyes that she never let us know.
She'd been to uni and dropped out. She wasn't happy there either… there was talk of bullying but she never told us what happened and, my parents being who they were, they never asked. It was always better to keep your business to yourself in my family. My parents were somewhat old fashioned. My coming out speech had not been my crowning glory, met by comments about how marrying a man was good because there would always be someone around to open especially tricky jars. We learnt to keep our private lives to ourselves – they were good people, don't get me wrong, they always put clothes on our backs and food on the table, but never really tried to understand us as people.
Which was why, I suppose, when Julia disappeared no one knew where to even start looking. She'd been going out to meet a friend one day. My mother had berated her for doing nothing with her life. I remember hearing from upstairs when Julia responded that she couldn't do what she wanted with her life and left in a fit of temper. Many hours later someone turned up on the doorstep to ask for her but my mother told him that she was out and didn't know when to expect her back. When no one had seen her the next day we started trying to ask around but she'd kept her life so private we didn't know any of her friends' names.
Two days passed when we finally called the police. There were searches, appeals and many many tears but we never saw or heard from her again.
We never even knew what happened. The last reports of seeing her getting into a blue car were confirmed by CCTV but the driver was never identified and my sister was never found.
Police didn't know whether to treat it as an abduction, a potential murder or a simple missing person's case. Either way, they never found her. Or she never wanted to be found.
As I arrived back at the station and made my way to CID I entered just in time to see Hunt scrunching up a cardboard cup and throwing it in the bin. I noticed three more already in there.
"Stringer."
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I was so close to saying something I was going to regret.
"Yes, sir?" I said through gritted teeth.
"I need another one of them coffee things. Late wotsits."
"Lattes," I sighed.
He nodded.
"One for me, one for Kite… Cocker, you thirsty?"
Malcolm took off his glasses and polished them.
"No, thank you," he said, "these are still steamed up from the last one."
Hunt turned back to me.
"And one for DCI Drake an' all. And no bloody detours to the beauty parlour this time, wherever yer going it's not working."
I started to shake with anger as he slammed the door of his office. Who the hell did he think he was to speak to me that way? I was a DS, I'd worked bloody hard for years and now my rank and my job satisfaction had been taken away on one fell swoop.
~xXx~
Hunt and his cronies never got their bloody lattes that day. I buggered off again, so confused by what I had seen that I started the drinking early for the night; drowned my sorrows in beer and scotch and by belting out Parklife like a bloody idiot at the karaoke. I shuddered as I realised, I was becoming one of them. The CID Drones.
When I woke the next morning my mouth was full of cotton and I had the familiar thumping headache firmly in place. I couldn't face work just yet so I decided to kill the hangover with the euphoria from getting metal through my flesh. After my experience the day before I was worried they'd take one look at me, roll their eyes and tell me to bugger off, but they were quite happy to take my money and stick a bar through my eyebrow.
I loved it. I loved all of it. Every time I looked on the mirror now I was looking a little more like I felt on the inside. That's a very precious thing to have. So many people never really manage that. Back in the real world I knew I never could but here? Here in my head I was free. Free on the outside at least. I was still trapped in a place of work that was slowly killing me from the inside out.
This one day I tried to make an effort. I thought that, if I was going to be here a while, I should try to get on the good side of Hunt at least so I bought a batch of lattes and took them back with me. Just for a moment I thought that I was actually going to do something right. The look on his face as he accepted the latte and greedily chugged half of it in one go was the first time I'd seen him look pleased since I arrived. It was just a shame that he followed it up in the next breath with;
"Cheers, Metal Mickey. More sugars next time."
Metal Mickey? That fucking robot? My blood boiled. It absolutely bubbled over with fury as I pushed the rest of the lattes to the ground and let my mouth rampantly unleash a batch of expletives.
Why wasn't I being punished for that? Why was there no sense of discipline against me? That made no sense. It was as though they knew I wasn't supposed to really be there… or Hunt did, at least. Sometimes Drake looked at me with sympathy and I got the feeling she knew more than she was letting on but then she'd just turn away and go about her duties. I felt alone and scared all over again.
Just as I saw Malcolm slip on the pool of latte and land on his arse, soaking his purple velvet trousers right through, the phone rang on my desk. I didn't recall it doing that before. Someone actually wanted to talk to me?
"Hello?" I said as I listed the receiver, "DS… DC Stringer?"
There was a pause. The line sounded strange and crackly, and then finally on came a voice.
"We need to get her into surgery right away. The location of the knife in her abdomen is fairly precarious. If it moves then her internal organs could become punctured and severely damaged. But don't worry, Mister Stringer we're doing all we can. She's in safe hands."
I shook and trembled as I let the receiver drop to the desk. I could hardy take in what I'd heard. It seemed ridiculous, how could someone on the phone be talking t o my father? How could a message from the other side be coming through the grotty old receiver on my desk? I ran my fingers through my heair and breathed oin deeply. This was too much, just far too much and I didn't know what to do. I was going into meltdown.
~xXx~
The last thing I wanted was to spend a night with that lot. Besides, I was scared I was going to end up singing Crocodile Shoes or something. So I took myself off to another bar that night.
There were one or two gay bars nearby, nothing to write home about really but I just wanted to be around people I could identify with. I hadn't exactly met many other lesbians in CID, had I? No one knew about my sexuality and that's the way I wanted to keep it. God's sake, Hunt had a fit when he caught Malcolm wearing eyeliner and he's straight! If he knew I was gay my life wouldn't be worth living.
I stepped into the bar feeling a little nervous. I wasn't sure why. I had shed most of my nerves when it came to going out in this place. None of these people were real so what did it matter if I threw up on someone or ended up snogging their brains out – I'd never see them again.
I moved to the bar and signalled for the bar tender. The music was loud, not far off the volume of the rave I arrived in, and I tried desperately to place my order but instead of the beer I wanted I was served something in a fetching shade of vermillion with two umbrellas popped in the top. Still, it seemed to have a lot of alcohol on it, so it was alright with me.
I drank and danced, danced and drank. I tried to catch the eye of a young brunette whose legs were driving me crazy but she went off with some redhead and I gave up on the idea of pulling. Maybe that was one area I should have left alone. I decided to concentrate on dancing instead. The music was loud but took me right back and I loved reliving a bit of my youth.
When I bumped into this one guy my first instinct was to apologise profusely, I could see he'd spilt beer down himself and – dream or not – I still felt bad.
"I'm sorry," I blabbed, "I'm really sorry –"
"Doesn't matter" he yelled over the music.
"I've spilt your beer," I pointed out unnecessarily.
"It's fine," he said, brushing down his shirt.
"Let me –" I began, reaching for the tissues in my bag. Yeah, I know. How old woman is that? But I never left home without tissues. Hayfever season – even in dream – was not kind to my nose.
"No, don't," he said loudly as I tried to wipe the wet patch on his shirt.
There was something strange about it; the shirt, I mean. Or what was under it, at least. As I tried to wipe the beer away I could feel something underneath it, that felt like a really big elastic bandage, It seemed really strange, like he'd bound a massive wound, all the way across his chest.
I think that was when I realised he wasn't a he..
My eyes scanned up to his face for the first time and I saw the smooth chin, hair-free top lip. That wasn't a close shave. I looked into his eyes and an instance of recognition filtered through my body. The gelled-back hair moulded into a masculine style, the strapping and – as I noticed just after – the stuffing down below had been enough to convince me, at first. But the eyes… there was no getting away from those eyes. I knew whose eyes I was looking into.
My sister's.