CHAPTER 10
I got the call a couple of weeks later. Shift patterns had been compared, but it was going to be a while before we had that window. Dad had had a long, long chat with Mam, and his response to me had just been a nod and the words “I will not see either of my daughters unhappy”

The call was from home. Sarah had turned up in a terrible state, and I knew at once what had happened. I got over there as quickly as I could, and she was a mess, her face clearly broken. The story came out amid sobs, and I felt my anger rise. Hold to the professionalism, Lainey, hold to family.

“It was such a good weekend, Lainey, and then he rings, and suddenly I could see what he was. I just wanted to tell him it was over, finished, aye? So we meet up, and he asks for one last kiss, and then he grabs me...here, where it's not real?”

She was shaking. “Next thing I know he's got his hand between my legs, and he's hitting me, and hitting me, and I wake up on the ground and someone gets an ambulance and....”

She went silent for a long time, staring past us all to another place. “Then there are two coppers there, and they tell me I am a dirty little shirtlifting pervert who got what he deserved, and if they ever see me again...”

My anger was almost coming out at that. I had to hold it down, do the right thing.

“Did you get their fucking names?”

Mam sniffed. “Language, Elaine”

“Shut it, Mam. And you? Where do you think you're going?”

Dad had risen to put his jacket on, a truly murderous look on his face.

“Little bastard needs some fatherly advice, aye?”

“No. Not now, not ever. We get the shit, but we get the coppers too. We get them clean, you understand?”

I thought quickly. Give Kev a ring, see what shits from CID had been sent down to deal with the assault, and start preparing their castration.

“Any witnesses to them being shits, Sar?”

“There was a nurse. She said she was shocked, she heard what they said”

“Right. I'll get Kev to speak to her, if you have her name, keep me out of it”

“She wrote it down for me?”

There was a rapid knock at the door, and I opened it on a pretty dark-haired girl of Sarah's age. I took a guess.

“Arris?”

She nodded, tears in her eyes. “How is she?”

“Shit state, woman. Come in”

She went straight to Sar, and wept gallons. I nodded to my parents.

“This is Arris, aye? Sar's friend from work she's always on about?”

Mam nodded again. “Then this is the first time my daughter has had a friend to visit. We shall have tea together. Twmi, lay the table please. We will be civilised”

The mood calmed down as Mam set out some bara brith and Welsh cakes, ever the traditional woman, and Dad sorted out kettle and cups. Sarah had clearly been treated well by Casualty, despite how she looked, and I guessed that the damage would heal. The wounds to her soul, though; they were something else. Arris looked across the table at her, eyes red-rimmed.

“Oh Sar, if I'd known it was him you were seeing, I'd have warned you off. All mouth and trousers, aye? And you are so new to this, you haven't learnt to recognise the bad ones”

Dad gave her a very hard stare. “What do you know about my daughter?”

“Just about everything, and I also love her deeply, as if she were my sister. Don't worry about me”

I left the room after a quick bite and picked up the phone.

“Kev, it's Lainey”

“Aye?”

“Got a big problem, butt. Sarah got read by the wrong bloke”

“Shit. How badly is she hurt?”

“Nose, cheekbone, aye? But they'll heal. There's more. She had two coppers up there, treated her like shit, blamed her for everything, aye? I want their names and I want their heads”

“Fucking hell, Lainey, what a pair of bastards! Which hospital?”

I told him. “Kev, there was a witness to it, a nurse. If I give you her name, could you get a statement?”

“I can do that, love. But I want to speak to the Inspector first, aye? Make sure it's all above board. We get these fuckers properly. Lainey, give her my love, aye?”

“Kev... thank you. I owe you. And... I took your example, aye?”

There was a chuckle at the other end of the line. “And she also said yes, aye? Silver linings, Lainey, silver linings. I'm off to get started. Talk to you when I get something”

“Thanks, butt”

“Any time, girl, and I mean that. Bye”

There had been some plotting around the table when I got back into the room. Sarah looked calmer.

“Lainey, I should introduce you properly, aye? This is Alison Parry, Arris, from work. She's the girl I took away for the weekend”

I gave Arris a welcoming hug. “I thought you weren't into women, chwaer?”

Make some jokes, lighten the mood before the family fell apart.

“Oh, not at all, and Arris is definitely into men, or rather having men into-”

Mam was quick off the mark. “Sarah Marie Rebecca Joanne Powell, we will be civilised in our house and before a guest!”

“Sorry, Mam, but, well, it was a good weekend, and this... I need to wash, aye?”

Raped, as good as. And she would already be blaming herself. Get her off that track.

“I have set wheels in motion, aye? Things will be sorted. All we have to do is find a way to deal with this Joe Evans”

Arris coughed, and gave a smile with absolutely no humour in it at all. This was not a weak woman, I saw, and under other circumstances I would have been very taken with her. She held our eyes, held her smile.

“I might just have something available”

I realised that, officially, I really didn't want to know any more. Some days later, Kev took me aside.

“I got their names, and I got her statement, and I think the Inspector is a little unhappy”

“With me or you?”

“No, them. Looks like one of them spoke to the Screws. You know what that rag can be like. Looks like they spoke to the locals as well, which fortunately will stuff their chances at getting paid for an 'exclusive', stupid bastards”

“Fuck. Who were they, butt?”

“Two wankers from CID in Abertawe HQ, Lainey. Names of Dai Pritchard and Bob Evans”

I woke up at that one. “Evans?”

“Lainey, come and sit down”

Evans.

“Lainey!”

He took me into an interview room, and made me sit.

“Evans, butt?”

He just nodded.

“He a relative, Kev?”

“His Dad's brother”

“How the fuck did that get past the bosses?”

“That is what the Inspector is trying to find out, Lainey, and that is why you really need to keep out of it. There's some really... irregular stuff going on here, and I don't think it stops at Detective Sergeant Evans' level. Not a word to Sar, aye? Inspector says he'll do his best, but I've already been warned off by the Federation rep. And there's more...”

He pulled some folded paper from his pocket. “Burn that after, aye? Little cunt had a sort of accident. That's a copy of his statement, that I was not given and did not pass on to you. Apparently, they didn't QUITE castrate him”

“Didn't quite?”

“He still has one left”

Under Kev's watchful eyes I read through the statement. The door answered and the first blow from the iron bar across the thigh, all the way to a moment that almost made me feel sorry for him. That phrase was there, though. 'Not quite'.

'Then the very big one, the one with the blonde moustache, pulled out a flick knife and said to me
ATTACKER 1: If you like having your cock sucked so much,perhaps if I cut it off now, and then you can have it to suck for your very own'

There was more, and as I read it my anger fought with joy. I wondered what Joe had done just then, whether he had pissed or fouled himself. Perhaps both. That piece of shit had truly got what he deserved, but it left gaps, risky returns that could land on my sister and my family.

“What is happening here, Kev?”

“Bit of fucking canteen culture, Lainey. They have been utter cunts, and caught at it, but we don't grass up our own, do we? All pull together to keep the good name of the Force, innit? The Brass are going to do something, anything, to keep this one out of the papers, and disciplining those two arseholes isn't what will work best to keep us all squeaky, aye? They're plotting, scheming bastards, all of them, but the Fed rep did say one thing. Sue them, sue the arse off them, and they will fold”

“What? Admit what those sods did?”

“Not at all. You know how it goes, girl. They'll pay up rather than have to front up. Gets Sar something out of it, innit. Gets her a new start if she wants one. And someone has looked after the first shit for us, and I do not need to know any more. And I am a very patient man”

“What do you mean?”

“One day, I will be in a place and at a time when I can return the favour Sarah's way”

“Why, Kev? Why so much for my little sis?”

He sighed and looked down, before his eyes came back up and looked directly into mine.

“Elaine Powell, you know that I love you. If things, if just ONE thing had been different, Sar would be my sister as well as yours. I am not trying to do Vicky down, for I met her after I already knew you, but the fact that I fell in love with one woman does not mean I fell out of love with another. As far as I am concerned, Sarah is and will always be my sister. Anyway, you will be my cousin soon, in a technical sense, so it is as real as it can be. You are both my family, and nobody touches you. Ever”