Wrong Place Wrong Time(18)

‘All right, welcome. God, is it still fucking raining?’ Bradford glances out at the car park. ‘First up, parade, then 999 jobs.’ He turns away from Ryan and leads him into the bowels of the place he will call work.

Parade. Bradford uses old-school language. But still, his first briefing. Ryan feels a dart of excitement like pins and needles in his stomach.

‘Kettle on,’ Bradford says to him.

‘Oh, sure,’ Ryan says, hoping to sound willing.

‘Tea round’s on the newbie.’ He indicates the briefing room. ‘Find out what everyone wants.’ He claps him on the shoulder as he leaves.

‘Okay, then.’

It’s fine, Ryan tells himself. He can make tea.

But tea, it turns out, is complicated. Fifteen cups. Different strengths, different sweetnesses, different fucking milks. Canderel, proper sugar – the works. Ryan’s hands are trembling by the time he’s ferried the last few mugs out, his knuckles burning. When he reaches the briefing room just as parade begins, he realizes he hasn’t made one for himself.

The sergeant, Joanne Zamo, is in her late forties, has the kind of wide smile that takes over a face. She begins to run through the list of active jobs, none of which Ryan understands. He is the only new PC here; the rest have been dispersed across the north. He gazes around the room, looking at the fifteen coppers and their fifteen cuppas. He’d hoped to find a mate here, someone his age.

Ryan left school at eighteen, worked office jobs with friends for the last few years. He had a great gig ordering stationery where nobody actually expected him to do anything productive but still wanted to pay him. He’d thought it was great, for a while, but it turns out ordering rulers and A4 lined paper is not enough for Ryan. He woke up one Monday morning, six months ago, and thought, Is this it?

And then he’d applied to join the police.

Zamo is giving out the list of call jobs. ‘Right,’ she adds. ‘Okay, who have we got here in new recruits? You.’ Her brown eyes light on Ryan. ‘Your tutor is Bradford?’

‘That’s right,’ Bradford says, before Ryan can.

‘Okay – you’re Echo.’ She looks straight at Ryan. ‘And Mike.’

‘Mike?’ Ryan says. ‘Sorry, no. I’m Ryan. Ryan Hiles.’

A flutter of Bradford’s eyelashes. A frisson that Ryan fails to understand. A beat. And then the room erupts.

‘Echo Mike,’ Bradford says, laughing, as though it is a punchline. He has one hand on the doorframe and one hand on his stomach. ‘Did you not learn about the phonetic alphabet at the Manchester academy, or do they not teach that these days?’

‘Oh yes, yes,’ Ryan says, his cheeks hot. ‘No, I did, I just – sorry, I thought … Mike confused me for just a second there.’

‘Right,’ the sergeant says, clearly unimpressed at the unbridled laughter. Just as it stops, it begins again, a wave coming from where CID are clustered. Great.

‘Echo Mike two four five,’ Bradford says, clearly trying to move on. He moves towards Ryan. ‘I’ll do the first response, then let you pick up the second,’ he adds, hurrying them out of the briefing room. Ryan daren’t ask what he means.

They walk down a green-carpeted corridor that smells of hoovering. They reach a locker and Bradford hands Ryan a radio. ‘All right. That’s yours. Calls come in like this: Echo Mike, your vehicle number. You respond with your collar number – yours is 2648, from your shoulder, right?’

‘Okay,’ Ryan says. ‘Okay.’ Every officer spends their first two years on 999 calls. Anything could come in. A burglary. A murder.

‘Right. Great,’ Bradford says. ‘Let’s go.’

He makes a gesture which says both This way, please and Christ, I hope you’re not a fucking idiot, and Ryan walks back out through the reception and into the rain.

‘This is EM two four five, all right, like Zamo said?’ Bradford says, gesturing to the police car. The stripes. The lights. Ryan can’t stop looking at it.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Sure.’ He opens the passenger seat and gets in. It smells of old cigarettes.

‘Echo Mike two four five, two four five from Echo,’ says the radio.

‘Echo from Mike two four five, go ahead,’ Bradford says tonelessly back. He hasn’t turned the engine on yet, is still twanging the gear stick. Next, he checks the lights work, hits a huge button on the dashboard which bathes them in blue. Ryan sits with his legs crossed in the footwell, listening to the radio.

‘Yes, thanks. We’ve got reports of an elderly male who appears drunk and is being offensive to passers-by.’

Ryan checks his watch. It’s five past eight in the morning.

‘Echo from Mike two four five, that’s received, on our way.’ Bradford finally starts the car’s engine and puts it into gear. ‘It’ll be Old Sandy,’ he remarks.

Ryan, terrified that there is also a letter of the police alphabet hidden in this sentence, says nothing.

‘Homeless guy, nice guy,’ Bradford says, checking his rear-view mirror as he pulls out. ‘We’ll just probably give him another warning. Call an ambo if he’s in a really bad way. Vodka’s his thing. Drinks pints and pints of it. Amazing constitution, really.’

Ryan watches the traffic as they wait at a set of lights. It is a totally different experience to driving his civilian car. You’d be forgiven for thinking everyone was an exemplary driver; it’s like something from The Truman Show, everyone acting. Hands at ten and two. Eyes straight ahead.