Safe Refuge for the Exile, Part 1: Cop, Interrupted
Nevermoor: Safe Refuge For the Exile
1: Cop, Interrupted
There was a man on a train. This train was the absolute last place he wanted to be, because it was speeding him away from the place in which he did want to be, had in fact expected to be for the rest of his life. His carriage - carriage 'D', as the computer-generated letters above the door informed him - was very quiet. This door, by the way, the unwilling passenger had thought to be broken, for instead of hissing smoothly shut after he passed through it, it closed only partway, then, as though an invisible person had shoved their arm into the narrowing gap, abruptly shuddered open again. After a while, the passenger realised that this was because the single overstuffed suitcase which contained most of his worldly goods had slipped sideways out of the luggage compartment and was repeatedly setting off the door's sensor.
He couldn't be bothered to move his case, despite the occasional scowl from other passengers. The seemingly possessed door felt like some kind of omen. But then, today everything felt like an omen: the near-empty carriage, in which he had a table all to himself; the view from the window transmuting slowly from the dusty streets and towering buildings he loved to nasty green cow-infested countryside; the fact that the drinks trolley (didn't they have shops on trains anymore?) hadn't been past in almost an hour, and he was gasping for another drink. After a while he decided that these things weren't omens, they were just events conspiring to make his already wrecked life even more shit.
He got up unsteadily - had trains always rocked about this much? - ignoring the 'tut' of a newspaper-reading woman as he stumbled over her foot. “Shouldn't have it sticking out in the aisle,” he told her, and it must have been the rasp in his voice - his throat was sore - undermining his normal tone of crisp authority, because she merely scowled at him, shook out her newspaper, and did her best to trip him up when he realised he was walking in the wrong direction and turned awkwardly around in the narrow space, climbing over her feet again.
The drinks trolley was, as he had hoped, parked at the front of the train. The bored-looking young man who had earlier doled out little quarter-bottles of merlot without comment - they didn't do spirits, apparently - was standing with it, a pimply guardian of the passenger's peace of mind.
“Two merlots, please,” he said, fumbling for his wallet.
The bored-looking young man made brief eye contact, long enough to register disapproval. “You 'ad two before,” he sniffed.
“Yeah,” said the passenger, “and now I want two more.”
“Bit early, innit?”
The passenger squinted at his watch while the young man squinted at him, taking in the unshaven jaw, the shell-shocked appearance. “It's ten past eleven,” the passenger, the prisoner said.
“Yeah. Bit early to be gettin' pissed, mate.”
“I am not your mate. I am,” the passenger scrabbled in his inside pocket and pulled out his ID, “a detective inspector with the London metropolitan police.”
Another sniff. “Means you get special dispensation to be pissed on Sunday mornings? Didn't know it worked like that, mate.”
“Stop calling me 'mate'!” Detective Inspector Derek Baynham put away his ID and tried hard not to froth at the mouth; he reckoned he already looked quite mad and desperate enough to be going on with. “I am not your mate!”
“Why's that then? Is it 'cos you're too mental to 'ave any mates?”
“No! It's because you won't give me any bloody merlot!”
Baynham knew he was twitching, knew the prince of soggy over-mayo'd sandwiches here must think him some kind of crazy alcoholic, was probably already half-convinced he'd killed a policeman and stolen his ID...at the moment Baynham might even have believed that himself. It was, perhaps, better than the alternative explanation, which involved accepting reality, something Baynham didn’t fancy at all at the moment - hence the desire for merlot. He wanted to draw attention to his situation even less that he wanted to be drinkless, however, so he backed off, fearing the activation of some kind of silent alarm which would bring the thuggish-looking train manager who had earlier glared at his ticket. He was urgently prodding the button to open the door into the next carriage when the dragon decided to lift his arse off the golden eggs after all.
“Didn't say I wouldn't give it you, did I? Six pound eighty, ta.” The blessed lad held out a hand.
“...oh.” Baynham pulled a ten-pound note from his wallet and handed it over. “Keep the change.”
“Cheers - mate.”
x-x-x-x-x
Back in the carriage, I - he - oh, all right. I am Derek Baynham and I don't see why I should hide the fact. My ghostwriter writer tells me she's planning to remove all these 'interludes' of mine from the final draft, hence I feel it appropriate to jump in as necessary. It's all in the editing. I was considering publishing this under a false name and pretending it was a work of fiction, but I can see now that it would make things awkward, and I don't like awkward: I like things tidy and neat and sorted. I keep my DVDs categorised by genre then alphabetically by lead actor then alphabetically by title. I arrange my underpants in order of darkness from white to black. I colour-code the stuff in my fridge and stick little labels on to indicate when I opened each bottle or jar. It's my thing. One of my things, anyway. Don't judge me.
I'm on a train headed to Dartford instead of collating my report on the biggest case of my career - my first really big break, which was supposed to lead to promotion, fame, glory, the sudden availability of legion sexual partners, etc. - because this happened:
x-x-x-x-x
At three-fifty-five on a Friday afternoon, when his less ambitious colleagues were beginning to look at their watches and wonder about the possibility of bunking off for the last hour of the week, DS Derek Baynham sat at his desk, typing feverishly as he put the finishing touches to his report. Done, he sat back in his chair, stretched his aching back and smirked happily, hoping somebody would spot his pleased expression and ask him what he was looking so chipper about - was he going to the pub after work? No, he would say, I’m pleased because I’m about to achieve my lifelong ambition, thank you. The time was near. His meeting with DCS Cooper was almost upon him, the meeting at which he would be lauded, congratulated, and generally cooed over by the top brass, culminating in a special reward for the Met's brightest rising star: promotion, and a transfer to the organised crime division. What he'd always wanted, every since, as a little boy, he’d watched the Godfather films with his dad, and thought, they really oughtn't to be doing that. Almost there, within his grasp.
And he'd earned it. No wealthy parents to grease his path (if that was the phrase; it somehow didn't sound right), no posh education, no old boy's network to call on. He'd worked for this, oozing and bleeding and sobbing pints of his own sweat and blood and tears as he watched younger, degree-possessing colleagues (some of the smartarses even had postgraduate qualifications in things like criminology and forensic psychology) being promoted all around him...and now, at last, it would pay off. The diligence. The method. The bloody graft. Finally, it would all be worth it. This was to be his moment.
Adjusting his tie, Banyham favoured his colleagues with a regal wave of farewell as he strode purposefully across the shared office to a little room section off by a glass partition. He knocked on the door, turned around as he waited for a last look at the sad cheap plastic-topped table and crap computer, shared by three people, which he would be leaving behind. On to bigger, better things. He'd have his own desk in the organised crime division. Perhaps even his own office!
“Come,” called the crisp, iron-grey voice of DCS Cooper. Baynham strode in, closed the door behind him with a little flourish, and noted with a thrill that, as hoped, one of the brass had made his way to the fated meeting - only one, though, a tall, thin, rather worried-looking man in a black suit. Baynham was momentarily disappointed; he had hoped for the assistant commissioner and a couple of reporters, at least.
Before he could introduce himself, the tall man said, “this him?”
“Yes,” said DCS Cooper, in a tired sort of voice.
“DS Derek Baynham?”
“Yes,” said Baynham, feeling his superior was stealing his thunder somewhat.
“Oh dear,” said the tall man.
Baynham was indignant. He might not be the most physically compelling man in the world - if he were honest he would admit to not being the most physically compelling man in the room, and Mr. Suit-Mysterious had a scrunched-up forehead and a squint - but 'oh dear' seemed a bit much. In a moment of paranoia he wondered whether they had left off the reporters because they didn’t find Baynham sufficiently photogenic.
“Who are you?” Baynham demanded, noting as he did that Cooper had not invited him to sit down, and apparently didn't intend to.
“This is Mr. Smith,” she said.
Mr. Smith nodded confirmation. “Smith,” he said, to drive the point home. “MI6.”
Bloody hell. Bloody hell. Baynham's heart was suddenly racing. No wonder there were no reporters. The Spooks had noticed his potential and singled him out for attention. He was being headhunted by the Secret Service! Goodbye, tatty office and pepper spray. Hello Armani suits, a bastard big cock-extension of a shiny car, and a lethal weapon in a shoulder holster!
Smith the Suit didn't look much like an MI6 operative, really; he looked more like a stressed-out father trying to shepherd a family of hyperactive kids. Nonetheless, Baynham stood just a bit more upright and looked the man in the eye as Smith asked, “you're the chap who solved the DeRizzio case?”
Baynham stood straighter still; something crackled ominously in his spine, but he didn't care. “I am,” he confided, aiming for a kind of hushed gravity, trying hard not to beam like somebody in a toothpaste advert.
“Christ,” sighed Mr. Smith.
This was not the response Baynham had expected. “I'm nearly finished with my report,” he went on, no longer finding it quite so hard to suppress his grin. “I wanted to go into every detail, sir, so it's almost five thousand words in total, plus all the additional documentation and everything, I have it all collated - I just need ten minutes to spell-check it and print it all off...”
“Shred it,” said Smith.
Baynham deflated slowly and uninvitedly into a chair. “What?”
“He said 'shred it', Sergeant. And you will.” Cooper had her hands clasped in front of her on the desk; she looked almost - apologetic. “Unfortunately, your solution to the case, though technically correct in the, er, details, was - unacceptable.”
“But -”
“Potentially rather embarrassing for the country.”
“But - “
“Extremely risky on the international front.”
“But -”
“Don't worry. Your contribution will be fully recognised and you’ll compensated for the time you spent on this case. We admire your - er - grit. It was the organised crime division you fancied, wasn't it? You won't lose out over this, Baynham, I promise you. All you have to do is sign these...”
x-x-x-x-x
And that was it: the crossroads. Three sheets of cheap off-white paper stood between me and the career I'd wanted all my life. And besides, I was being given an opportunity to serve my country, help avoid an embarrassing diplomatic incident - by covering up for the son of a well-known diplomat, who'd murdered a young girl, a maid at his father's hotel. A little shit who thought he owned not only the world, but all the people in it.
Well, what would you have done? This man would walk no matter what happened. The worst I could do would be to refuse to destroy my report, send it to the papers instead. But that would be stupid; the kid would deny everything, and my life would be in ruins.
What would you have done?
x-x-x-x-x
“Fuck off,” said Baynham.
Cooper's steely eyebrows rose a fraction in her hatchet face. “I beg your pardon, Baynham?”
“I said fuck off, ma'am, but I meant this greasy arsehole here, not you.”
“Are you a patriot, Sergeant?” Smith asked, in a patient voice, as though this sort of thing happened to him all the time.
“Are you an accessory to murder, Mr. Smith?” Baynham shot back.
x-x-x-x-x
In retrospect, that last bit probably did for me. I shouldn't really have accused a senior MI6 operative of being a deliberate party to a major crime. Anyway, it was done. I sent my immediate superior, DI Forester - the one who'd said 'here, you handle the report on this one, Baynham, you earned it and anyway I'm off to Florida for three weeks' - a strongly-worded email, to which I received a brief reply, the written equivalent of a vaguely sympathetic shrug. Thus abandoned, I stuck to my guns and sent in my report, which mysteriously went missing, along with the original file from my office computer and all the backups I’d made, even the one on the USB stick I’d hidden in my underwear drawer. If DI Forester made a report of her own I never heard anything about it. Three days later I was called into Cooper's office again. No tall git in a suit this time.
x-x-x-x-x
“So. Baynham.”
“Ma'am.”
DCS Cooper stirred her coffee. She'd been stirring it for almost five minutes, ever since Baynham had come into her office and stood quietly, with dignity, in front of her desk.
At least, that was what he had been doing for the last thirty seconds; he'd spent the first four and a half minutes shouting at her about police corruption and evil bastard spooks and was anybody going to give him any kudos for bringing in a murdering shit who thought it was okay to chop up young women just because his dad had diplomatic immunity?
“Sit down, Baynham.”
Knowing that tone, he sat.
“Of course we're all very grateful for your hard work, and impressed with your ingenuity - and your integrity.” She sounded as though she meant it.
“Oh. Er, thanks.”
“Unfortunately, we live in...difficult times.”
“Right.”
“Look at this.” She handed across a sheaf of paper.
“I'm not signing some bloody...”
“It's the Official Secrets Act, and if you don't abide by it I'll have to arrest you and charge you with treason.”
“But I didn't sign the...oh.” It appeared that he had, after all. “I must have amnesia,” he told DCS Cooper, in a mechanical voice devoid of inflection, in case the walls had ears, but lacked a sense of irony.
“Yes, you must,” she replied, equally blandly. “In recognition of your efforts and your - er - patriotism, I'm pleased to inform you of your promotion to Detective Inspector.”
“Thanks,” said Baynham, cautiously. If the walls had been telepathic as well as possessing an auditory processing system, they would have heard him think, where's the catch?
“Your transfer will be effective immediately.”
Baynham could hardly believe his luck. He'd done his bit for integrity - could it be that there was justice in the universe? That his brave stand was to be rewarded after all? “To organised crime?” he asked, leaning forward across the desk and knocking over Cooper's coffee.
“Not quite,” she admitted, mopping up.
“Not...quite,” Baynham echoed. “Then where...?”
Cooper was placing a thick wedge of papers on the desk between them; at first Baynham leaned back out of the way, thinking she'd run out of tissues for the coffee, then he realised she was trying to give him an enormous, untidy-looking file, bits of different-coloured paper spilling out into the soggy mess seeping slowly across the desk. Baynham grimaced in distaste.
“Have you heard of DCS Farmer?” Cooper asked, brightly.
“No.”
“Oh! Well - lovely man. Very intelligent - quite gifted. Extremely capable. Never a Mason, which is a significant boon in the modern Force...”
“I'm not really into men,” Baynham told her.
“I'm not attempting to matchmake, Sergeant - Inspector, I mean. Jason Farmer is your new commanding officer.”
Baynham steeled himself. “And DCS Farmer is based in...?”
x-x-x-x-x
Dartford, Devon. I'd never heard of it - Dartford, I mean, I'd heard of Devon. Knew Dartmoor reasonably well, in fact - the prison, at least. I found it on the map all right, and having been told Dartford was quite nearby, I thought I’d have no trouble finding that, too. I didn’t - it was a small town on the edge of the moor closest to the prison. Fine; now I knew where my new boss worked.
Then I looked for the place where I’d been told I would be working, a ‘smaller outpost’ of the Dartford station, according to DCS Cooper. Eventually I found that, as well.
It took me three maps and five hours, but I found it.
Briefly considered throttling myself with my own tie, dismissed the idea and booked a train instead.
Then I got drunk, and stayed that way for as long as humanly possible.
x-x-x-x-x
Baynham was still slightly drunk when he got off the proper train in Newton Abbot and caught a little green-and-yellow stopping train. It was so small he could practically have stopped it with a butterfly net. The countryside outside the window had changed, rain-soaked green fields and stretches of crashing grey ocean replaced by slate-coloured or reddish tors, surrounding him on all sides, boxing him in. His fellow passengers were no longer newspaper-reading women in business suits, but solid-looking men wearing tweed caps, most of whom had dusty, bright-eyed dogs sitting with them. One chap even had a very small pony, which stood patiently in the vestibule, swishing its tail and chewing on Baynham’s sleeve as he hovered near the door, afraid of missing the tiny station which was his final destination.
The pony’s owner came to stand beside him as the train slowed. Baynham gave him a cautious nod. The farmer, gamekeeper, horse pornographer, whatever he was, nodded solemnly back. When the train came to a full stop, an unfazed train manager (as Baynham first thought) or rather driver (as he then realised, recognising him) opened the door to let the pony off first.
“Is this, er -?” Baynham asked. He’d spoken to the driver when he got on, since this particular stop was made by passenger request only.
“This is it, sir,” the driver confirmed, and had Baynham imagined the rather sinister quality of his smile, the trace of Schadenfreude in his curly westcountry vowels? “Left Hanging Halt. Last stop, as it happens. End of the road. Help you with your bag, sir?”
“No thanks,” Baynham said. “It isn’t that heavy.”
“Here on holiday, are you?”
“I wish. No, not a holiday, it’s a bit longer-term than that - like you said, in fact.”
“Eh?”
“Yeah.” Baynham dropped his bag onto the platform, which was nothing more than a sad-looking slab of rain-soddened earth. “End of the bloody road."
End of the bloody world.
1: Cop, Interrupted
There was a man on a train. This train was the absolute last place he wanted to be, because it was speeding him away from the place in which he did want to be, had in fact expected to be for the rest of his life. His carriage - carriage 'D', as the computer-generated letters above the door informed him - was very quiet. This door, by the way, the unwilling passenger had thought to be broken, for instead of hissing smoothly shut after he passed through it, it closed only partway, then, as though an invisible person had shoved their arm into the narrowing gap, abruptly shuddered open again. After a while, the passenger realised that this was because the single overstuffed suitcase which contained most of his worldly goods had slipped sideways out of the luggage compartment and was repeatedly setting off the door's sensor.
He couldn't be bothered to move his case, despite the occasional scowl from other passengers. The seemingly possessed door felt like some kind of omen. But then, today everything felt like an omen: the near-empty carriage, in which he had a table all to himself; the view from the window transmuting slowly from the dusty streets and towering buildings he loved to nasty green cow-infested countryside; the fact that the drinks trolley (didn't they have shops on trains anymore?) hadn't been past in almost an hour, and he was gasping for another drink. After a while he decided that these things weren't omens, they were just events conspiring to make his already wrecked life even more shit.
He got up unsteadily - had trains always rocked about this much? - ignoring the 'tut' of a newspaper-reading woman as he stumbled over her foot. “Shouldn't have it sticking out in the aisle,” he told her, and it must have been the rasp in his voice - his throat was sore - undermining his normal tone of crisp authority, because she merely scowled at him, shook out her newspaper, and did her best to trip him up when he realised he was walking in the wrong direction and turned awkwardly around in the narrow space, climbing over her feet again.
The drinks trolley was, as he had hoped, parked at the front of the train. The bored-looking young man who had earlier doled out little quarter-bottles of merlot without comment - they didn't do spirits, apparently - was standing with it, a pimply guardian of the passenger's peace of mind.
“Two merlots, please,” he said, fumbling for his wallet.
The bored-looking young man made brief eye contact, long enough to register disapproval. “You 'ad two before,” he sniffed.
“Yeah,” said the passenger, “and now I want two more.”
“Bit early, innit?”
The passenger squinted at his watch while the young man squinted at him, taking in the unshaven jaw, the shell-shocked appearance. “It's ten past eleven,” the passenger, the prisoner said.
“Yeah. Bit early to be gettin' pissed, mate.”
“I am not your mate. I am,” the passenger scrabbled in his inside pocket and pulled out his ID, “a detective inspector with the London metropolitan police.”
Another sniff. “Means you get special dispensation to be pissed on Sunday mornings? Didn't know it worked like that, mate.”
“Stop calling me 'mate'!” Detective Inspector Derek Baynham put away his ID and tried hard not to froth at the mouth; he reckoned he already looked quite mad and desperate enough to be going on with. “I am not your mate!”
“Why's that then? Is it 'cos you're too mental to 'ave any mates?”
“No! It's because you won't give me any bloody merlot!”
Baynham knew he was twitching, knew the prince of soggy over-mayo'd sandwiches here must think him some kind of crazy alcoholic, was probably already half-convinced he'd killed a policeman and stolen his ID...at the moment Baynham might even have believed that himself. It was, perhaps, better than the alternative explanation, which involved accepting reality, something Baynham didn’t fancy at all at the moment - hence the desire for merlot. He wanted to draw attention to his situation even less that he wanted to be drinkless, however, so he backed off, fearing the activation of some kind of silent alarm which would bring the thuggish-looking train manager who had earlier glared at his ticket. He was urgently prodding the button to open the door into the next carriage when the dragon decided to lift his arse off the golden eggs after all.
“Didn't say I wouldn't give it you, did I? Six pound eighty, ta.” The blessed lad held out a hand.
“...oh.” Baynham pulled a ten-pound note from his wallet and handed it over. “Keep the change.”
“Cheers - mate.”
x-x-x-x-x
Back in the carriage, I - he - oh, all right. I am Derek Baynham and I don't see why I should hide the fact. My ghostwriter writer tells me she's planning to remove all these 'interludes' of mine from the final draft, hence I feel it appropriate to jump in as necessary. It's all in the editing. I was considering publishing this under a false name and pretending it was a work of fiction, but I can see now that it would make things awkward, and I don't like awkward: I like things tidy and neat and sorted. I keep my DVDs categorised by genre then alphabetically by lead actor then alphabetically by title. I arrange my underpants in order of darkness from white to black. I colour-code the stuff in my fridge and stick little labels on to indicate when I opened each bottle or jar. It's my thing. One of my things, anyway. Don't judge me.
I'm on a train headed to Dartford instead of collating my report on the biggest case of my career - my first really big break, which was supposed to lead to promotion, fame, glory, the sudden availability of legion sexual partners, etc. - because this happened:
x-x-x-x-x
At three-fifty-five on a Friday afternoon, when his less ambitious colleagues were beginning to look at their watches and wonder about the possibility of bunking off for the last hour of the week, DS Derek Baynham sat at his desk, typing feverishly as he put the finishing touches to his report. Done, he sat back in his chair, stretched his aching back and smirked happily, hoping somebody would spot his pleased expression and ask him what he was looking so chipper about - was he going to the pub after work? No, he would say, I’m pleased because I’m about to achieve my lifelong ambition, thank you. The time was near. His meeting with DCS Cooper was almost upon him, the meeting at which he would be lauded, congratulated, and generally cooed over by the top brass, culminating in a special reward for the Met's brightest rising star: promotion, and a transfer to the organised crime division. What he'd always wanted, every since, as a little boy, he’d watched the Godfather films with his dad, and thought, they really oughtn't to be doing that. Almost there, within his grasp.
And he'd earned it. No wealthy parents to grease his path (if that was the phrase; it somehow didn't sound right), no posh education, no old boy's network to call on. He'd worked for this, oozing and bleeding and sobbing pints of his own sweat and blood and tears as he watched younger, degree-possessing colleagues (some of the smartarses even had postgraduate qualifications in things like criminology and forensic psychology) being promoted all around him...and now, at last, it would pay off. The diligence. The method. The bloody graft. Finally, it would all be worth it. This was to be his moment.
Adjusting his tie, Banyham favoured his colleagues with a regal wave of farewell as he strode purposefully across the shared office to a little room section off by a glass partition. He knocked on the door, turned around as he waited for a last look at the sad cheap plastic-topped table and crap computer, shared by three people, which he would be leaving behind. On to bigger, better things. He'd have his own desk in the organised crime division. Perhaps even his own office!
“Come,” called the crisp, iron-grey voice of DCS Cooper. Baynham strode in, closed the door behind him with a little flourish, and noted with a thrill that, as hoped, one of the brass had made his way to the fated meeting - only one, though, a tall, thin, rather worried-looking man in a black suit. Baynham was momentarily disappointed; he had hoped for the assistant commissioner and a couple of reporters, at least.
Before he could introduce himself, the tall man said, “this him?”
“Yes,” said DCS Cooper, in a tired sort of voice.
“DS Derek Baynham?”
“Yes,” said Baynham, feeling his superior was stealing his thunder somewhat.
“Oh dear,” said the tall man.
Baynham was indignant. He might not be the most physically compelling man in the world - if he were honest he would admit to not being the most physically compelling man in the room, and Mr. Suit-Mysterious had a scrunched-up forehead and a squint - but 'oh dear' seemed a bit much. In a moment of paranoia he wondered whether they had left off the reporters because they didn’t find Baynham sufficiently photogenic.
“Who are you?” Baynham demanded, noting as he did that Cooper had not invited him to sit down, and apparently didn't intend to.
“This is Mr. Smith,” she said.
Mr. Smith nodded confirmation. “Smith,” he said, to drive the point home. “MI6.”
Bloody hell. Bloody hell. Baynham's heart was suddenly racing. No wonder there were no reporters. The Spooks had noticed his potential and singled him out for attention. He was being headhunted by the Secret Service! Goodbye, tatty office and pepper spray. Hello Armani suits, a bastard big cock-extension of a shiny car, and a lethal weapon in a shoulder holster!
Smith the Suit didn't look much like an MI6 operative, really; he looked more like a stressed-out father trying to shepherd a family of hyperactive kids. Nonetheless, Baynham stood just a bit more upright and looked the man in the eye as Smith asked, “you're the chap who solved the DeRizzio case?”
Baynham stood straighter still; something crackled ominously in his spine, but he didn't care. “I am,” he confided, aiming for a kind of hushed gravity, trying hard not to beam like somebody in a toothpaste advert.
“Christ,” sighed Mr. Smith.
This was not the response Baynham had expected. “I'm nearly finished with my report,” he went on, no longer finding it quite so hard to suppress his grin. “I wanted to go into every detail, sir, so it's almost five thousand words in total, plus all the additional documentation and everything, I have it all collated - I just need ten minutes to spell-check it and print it all off...”
“Shred it,” said Smith.
Baynham deflated slowly and uninvitedly into a chair. “What?”
“He said 'shred it', Sergeant. And you will.” Cooper had her hands clasped in front of her on the desk; she looked almost - apologetic. “Unfortunately, your solution to the case, though technically correct in the, er, details, was - unacceptable.”
“But -”
“Potentially rather embarrassing for the country.”
“But - “
“Extremely risky on the international front.”
“But -”
“Don't worry. Your contribution will be fully recognised and you’ll compensated for the time you spent on this case. We admire your - er - grit. It was the organised crime division you fancied, wasn't it? You won't lose out over this, Baynham, I promise you. All you have to do is sign these...”
x-x-x-x-x
And that was it: the crossroads. Three sheets of cheap off-white paper stood between me and the career I'd wanted all my life. And besides, I was being given an opportunity to serve my country, help avoid an embarrassing diplomatic incident - by covering up for the son of a well-known diplomat, who'd murdered a young girl, a maid at his father's hotel. A little shit who thought he owned not only the world, but all the people in it.
Well, what would you have done? This man would walk no matter what happened. The worst I could do would be to refuse to destroy my report, send it to the papers instead. But that would be stupid; the kid would deny everything, and my life would be in ruins.
What would you have done?
x-x-x-x-x
“Fuck off,” said Baynham.
Cooper's steely eyebrows rose a fraction in her hatchet face. “I beg your pardon, Baynham?”
“I said fuck off, ma'am, but I meant this greasy arsehole here, not you.”
“Are you a patriot, Sergeant?” Smith asked, in a patient voice, as though this sort of thing happened to him all the time.
“Are you an accessory to murder, Mr. Smith?” Baynham shot back.
x-x-x-x-x
In retrospect, that last bit probably did for me. I shouldn't really have accused a senior MI6 operative of being a deliberate party to a major crime. Anyway, it was done. I sent my immediate superior, DI Forester - the one who'd said 'here, you handle the report on this one, Baynham, you earned it and anyway I'm off to Florida for three weeks' - a strongly-worded email, to which I received a brief reply, the written equivalent of a vaguely sympathetic shrug. Thus abandoned, I stuck to my guns and sent in my report, which mysteriously went missing, along with the original file from my office computer and all the backups I’d made, even the one on the USB stick I’d hidden in my underwear drawer. If DI Forester made a report of her own I never heard anything about it. Three days later I was called into Cooper's office again. No tall git in a suit this time.
x-x-x-x-x
“So. Baynham.”
“Ma'am.”
DCS Cooper stirred her coffee. She'd been stirring it for almost five minutes, ever since Baynham had come into her office and stood quietly, with dignity, in front of her desk.
At least, that was what he had been doing for the last thirty seconds; he'd spent the first four and a half minutes shouting at her about police corruption and evil bastard spooks and was anybody going to give him any kudos for bringing in a murdering shit who thought it was okay to chop up young women just because his dad had diplomatic immunity?
“Sit down, Baynham.”
Knowing that tone, he sat.
“Of course we're all very grateful for your hard work, and impressed with your ingenuity - and your integrity.” She sounded as though she meant it.
“Oh. Er, thanks.”
“Unfortunately, we live in...difficult times.”
“Right.”
“Look at this.” She handed across a sheaf of paper.
“I'm not signing some bloody...”
“It's the Official Secrets Act, and if you don't abide by it I'll have to arrest you and charge you with treason.”
“But I didn't sign the...oh.” It appeared that he had, after all. “I must have amnesia,” he told DCS Cooper, in a mechanical voice devoid of inflection, in case the walls had ears, but lacked a sense of irony.
“Yes, you must,” she replied, equally blandly. “In recognition of your efforts and your - er - patriotism, I'm pleased to inform you of your promotion to Detective Inspector.”
“Thanks,” said Baynham, cautiously. If the walls had been telepathic as well as possessing an auditory processing system, they would have heard him think, where's the catch?
“Your transfer will be effective immediately.”
Baynham could hardly believe his luck. He'd done his bit for integrity - could it be that there was justice in the universe? That his brave stand was to be rewarded after all? “To organised crime?” he asked, leaning forward across the desk and knocking over Cooper's coffee.
“Not quite,” she admitted, mopping up.
“Not...quite,” Baynham echoed. “Then where...?”
Cooper was placing a thick wedge of papers on the desk between them; at first Baynham leaned back out of the way, thinking she'd run out of tissues for the coffee, then he realised she was trying to give him an enormous, untidy-looking file, bits of different-coloured paper spilling out into the soggy mess seeping slowly across the desk. Baynham grimaced in distaste.
“Have you heard of DCS Farmer?” Cooper asked, brightly.
“No.”
“Oh! Well - lovely man. Very intelligent - quite gifted. Extremely capable. Never a Mason, which is a significant boon in the modern Force...”
“I'm not really into men,” Baynham told her.
“I'm not attempting to matchmake, Sergeant - Inspector, I mean. Jason Farmer is your new commanding officer.”
Baynham steeled himself. “And DCS Farmer is based in...?”
x-x-x-x-x
Dartford, Devon. I'd never heard of it - Dartford, I mean, I'd heard of Devon. Knew Dartmoor reasonably well, in fact - the prison, at least. I found it on the map all right, and having been told Dartford was quite nearby, I thought I’d have no trouble finding that, too. I didn’t - it was a small town on the edge of the moor closest to the prison. Fine; now I knew where my new boss worked.
Then I looked for the place where I’d been told I would be working, a ‘smaller outpost’ of the Dartford station, according to DCS Cooper. Eventually I found that, as well.
It took me three maps and five hours, but I found it.
Briefly considered throttling myself with my own tie, dismissed the idea and booked a train instead.
Then I got drunk, and stayed that way for as long as humanly possible.
x-x-x-x-x
Baynham was still slightly drunk when he got off the proper train in Newton Abbot and caught a little green-and-yellow stopping train. It was so small he could practically have stopped it with a butterfly net. The countryside outside the window had changed, rain-soaked green fields and stretches of crashing grey ocean replaced by slate-coloured or reddish tors, surrounding him on all sides, boxing him in. His fellow passengers were no longer newspaper-reading women in business suits, but solid-looking men wearing tweed caps, most of whom had dusty, bright-eyed dogs sitting with them. One chap even had a very small pony, which stood patiently in the vestibule, swishing its tail and chewing on Baynham’s sleeve as he hovered near the door, afraid of missing the tiny station which was his final destination.
The pony’s owner came to stand beside him as the train slowed. Baynham gave him a cautious nod. The farmer, gamekeeper, horse pornographer, whatever he was, nodded solemnly back. When the train came to a full stop, an unfazed train manager (as Baynham first thought) or rather driver (as he then realised, recognising him) opened the door to let the pony off first.
“Is this, er -?” Baynham asked. He’d spoken to the driver when he got on, since this particular stop was made by passenger request only.
“This is it, sir,” the driver confirmed, and had Baynham imagined the rather sinister quality of his smile, the trace of Schadenfreude in his curly westcountry vowels? “Left Hanging Halt. Last stop, as it happens. End of the road. Help you with your bag, sir?”
“No thanks,” Baynham said. “It isn’t that heavy.”
“Here on holiday, are you?”
“I wish. No, not a holiday, it’s a bit longer-term than that - like you said, in fact.”
“Eh?”
“Yeah.” Baynham dropped his bag onto the platform, which was nothing more than a sad-looking slab of rain-soddened earth. “End of the bloody road."
End of the bloody world.