The Sun Will Still Shine Tomorrow (8 page)

“You have to be joking me, sir?” Ashley asked, dumbfounded. This just didn’t happen in real life, right?

“I never joke, Ashley.”

First-name terms again, bad vibes back. “I have no choice, Harrison’s filed a complaint, and you’ve just admitted to his accusation.”

Ashley’s temper simmered. He felt a growing rage. Nearly twenty years dedicating his life to the job, twenty years battling against the type of scum normal people only read about in the papers. He’d taken two knifes, more beatings than he cared to remember.

He blamed the job for the break-up in his relationship with Alexis. Three years he’d been engaged to her and most of that time she’d been trying to fix a date for the wedding. He’d been putting it off ever since he’d gone undercover for the Met. Didn’t really know why and couldn’t really explain it to her. He guessed it was the danger, didn’t want her to find out just what the job entailed.

He was mixing with and infiltrating the most dangerous drug dealing gangs in London and if he made one slip-up and they found out that the
addict
they were selling drugs to was really a cop, Alexis would have been a young widow. That was why he had been putting it off. That was the reason. He’d crack this job then return back home to Newcastle, his beautiful fiancée on his arm and they’d set a date.

He lived his role as a drug addict to the full. For four weeks, he’d effectively disappeared off the face of Alexis’s earth. He’d been living in a dirty squat with rats and cockroaches and other junkies and addicts. He’d been running with the gangs and begging on the street for the price of his next hit.

And he couldn’t take the chance of calling anyone, let alone Alexis, as he got nearer and nearer to the gang lords at the top. He’d dumped his mobile phone in the Thames at Fulham. Oh, how he’d wanted to call during that month long period. The station had called her each week, explained he was okay. They couldn’t be sure though, he hadn’t made contact with them either.

He’d passed her on the street one day. Thank God, she hadn’t recognised him. She wouldn’t have.

His hair hadn’t even been combed let alone washed for a month. He’d grown a short, dark, unkempt beard and he had a black swollen eye following an altercation with one of his housemates. He’d deliberately lost the fight, taken the kicking. It wouldn’t have looked good if his Met police self-defence training had kicked in.

He’d dressed in clothes one step up from a tramp. She had given him a cursory glance as she’d passed, almost looked a bit apprehensive. A little worried. Why not? He’d played the part well. A junkie, just the type to snatch a handbag for the price of the next fix. Easier still, a punch to the face of the victim to snuff out any resistance, maybe a blade. She’d pulled her shoulder bag tightly into her body, taken a firm grip of the strap and then… she was gone.

“Don’t worry, Ashley, I’ll back you up on this one. It’s the PC brigade again. I know you didn’t mean what he’s suggesting, and I’ll get this suspension overturned in days. DCI Gibbons says you and him go back a long way, says you’re a good cop.”

Rod dam’s words of comfort never registered.

And eventually he’d cracked the job. His information had secured the arrests that would eventually result in convictions and long sentences. Ashley was on a high; he positively glowed when he’d returned to the station to receive the adulation of his team. And he’d taken his time and showered like he’d never showered before, washing the filth and the human scum from his body.

And when he’d showered and dried off, he’d showered again, and then twice more. And as he stood and looked in the mirror as he shaved, he delighted in getting acquainted with his old familiar face once again. A splash of after-shave and a walk through the station backroom dressed in only a towel. The lads in the station had chipped in by way of a thank you and a brand new pair of Levi 501s together with a starched, crisp white granddad shirt, hung on two separate hangers in the locker room. He opened his locker and hauled out his battered beige deck shoes and a new pack of boxers.

He felt good as he walked down the Kings Road in Chelsea in bright summer sunshine. He’d called in to a Costa Coffee shop, treated himself to a large latte and a smoked salmon and cream cheese baguette. He’d been eating shit for weeks, it seemed.

It was six thirty in the evening. Alexis would be in by now. Surely? He’d stopped at a flower shop, picked up a ridiculously expensive bouquet of flowers, and wondered why he was delaying the meeting.

“I’ll tell them you’ll take a rap at divisional level, a black mark on your record and back on duty as quick as possible. I’m behind you one hundred per cent.”

There’d never been anyone like her before or since. He’d realised just how much he loved her the instant he’d discovered the note.

“DC Clarke… speak to me. At least acknowledge me.”

Her words blamed the job, she couldn’t go on, couldn’t take any more.’ The last straw.’ Not knowing whether you were alive or dead.’ And it continued as Ashley’s tears dropped onto the paper. It told of a promotion and how the company Alexis worked for had offered her a year-long post in New York. The posting was several weeks away but she felt it best if she left now, didn’t want him to contact her.

“The job, sir.”

“Yes, yes, Ashley I’ll get you back on the job just as soon as—”

“It fucking stinks, doesn’t it?”

Roddam fell back in his seat astounded that a lower ranking officer had dared to utter the F-word in his inner sanctum. Roddam wanted to lecture, wanted to lay down the law but by the time he’d regained the ability to speak again Ashley Clarke had gone.

Ashley didn’t bother with an explanation for his colleagues. He pulled a few personal items from his locker and climbed the stairs from the station into the gloom of the Newcastle day. He was in a daze, this couldn’t be happening.

Alexis. Alexis again. Why did she always come back to him in the bleak periods of his life? She would be halfway through her contract now. At first he’d tried to call her but every time he’d rung her mobile he’d been cut off. Eventually, after a few days, it didn’t even ring out, an obvious sign that she’d replaced the phone.

He’d tried to see her anywhere and everywhere. He’d been to her office,
away on a training course,
they’d said but refused to tell him where. And her mother’s house in Chiswick. Four times, he’d been, and four times her parents had stood on the step and refused him entry. Her mother stood with tears in her eyes, swore blind she hadn’t moved back to the family home and yet… something… something didn’t ring true. Joanna Brody was hiding something. And why had she looked so sad when Ashley turned away?

“Take care, Ash,” she had shouted after him as he reluctantly made his way down the red gravel driveway to the road. Each step felt like he was placing a million miles between himself and Alexis.

He had lost her.

As he reached the bottom of the drive he just knew he had lost her.

His mobile phone rang. The name Holy John flashed up on the display.

“Ash? Where the hell are you?”Ashley pressed
end
and turned right towards the central motorway and cursed the draconian licensing laws of England. He walked and walked. He walked the familiar streets of Jesmond, through Armstrong Park and down into Heaton and Byker. He stood at the top of Walker Road and watched the huge cranes of Swan Hunter shipyard. The day he left school, a quarter of his classmates made the short trip across town and began their working lives there. It was a job for life, the careers officer had said, and his father had tried oh so hard to make Ash stay at home.

“A good job at the shipyards. London’s streets aren’t paved with gold,” he’d said.”Stay where you belong, son.”

The sight of the cranes had depressed him then just as much as they did now. He pulled up the collar of his coat, cast an eye up to the ever-darkening sky and picked up the pace.

At eleven o’clock, he watched as the tiny double doors of the Queens Arms in Shieldfield opened. He took a quick look around him then headed for the opening. He wanted to think that the Queens hadn’t changed, but it had. In his early twenties he’d return home to Newcastle at every opportunity and, more often than not, the hours were spent in this small welcoming hostelry, a stone’s throw from Newcastle city centre.

At one thirty-seven, a familiar face sat down at his table.

“I’ve heard the bad news, Ash,” John Markham said with a voice that reeked sympathy. “Roddam came down before lunchtime and briefed the team.”

Ashley nodded a hello in his direction and shrugged his shoulders as if to say who cares.

But he did care.

“I put out a call to the uniforms; a few of them had spotted you over Heaton, then walking along Byker Bridge. I figured you’d need a drink or two, heard this place was an old haunt of yours.”

Ashley smiled. The beer had began to kick in; so too had the Talisker single malt. He gave a prayer of thanks to Bacchus. He felt at ease with the world, as if nothing really mattered. He hadn’t thought about what tomorrow might bring or the day after.

“Rod dam’s a good guy, Ash; reckons he’ll have you back within a week or two. He’s backing you all the way.” John Markham laughed.”He had a quiet word with me, reckons you were a bit out of order up there. Won’t take it any further though.”

John Markham sat with Ashley for another two hours and made no attempt to persuade him to leave. Each time he asked for another drink, Markham obeyed his command.

Ashley’s speech was now slurred and on what was to be his final trip to the toilet he needed a chair for support and two walls to make it there safely. As he staggered back to the table Markham offered him a lift home. He was only too happy to accept it. Ash knew when he’d had enough. The alcohol had served its purpose. Markham poured him into the back of the unmarked car and drove him the short distance to his rented flat in Fenham.

At eight the next morning, Ashley awoke with a start. He looked at his watch. He’d crawled into bed just after five the previous afternoon. Fifteen hours’ uninterrupted sleep.
Jesus
, who was hammering the door down at this time of the morning?

Holy John stood grinning on the step, two Styrofoam cartons in his hand.

“I thought a good English breakfast might cure those hangover blues. The deli on Acorn Road does the best in town, opens real early. Not as good as a Holy Island special, mind, but definitely the best in town.”

“What the hell are you up to this early on a Sunday morning, John?”

“I’ve been to the early morning service, Ash, never miss a Sunday.”

Ashley rubbed at his heavy eyelids, screwed them up tightly as a ray of early morning sunshine shot over John Markham’s shoulder blade.

“Church?”

John smiled.

“Church and a good breakfast, praise the Lord.”

“Praise the Lord, John… Yeah… praise the Lord.”

Ashley wanted to dive into an atheist argument and ask Holy John how come the scriptures tell us the world was created a few thousand years ago and yet the Natural History Museum in London houses some dinosaur bones three million years old. He wanted to, he really did, but the moment passed.

John wafted the cartons in front of Ashley’s face. The smell of the bacon and sausage and fried eggs and black pudding tugged at his taste buds and if it had been Charles Manson with a machete between his teeth, he still would have allowed him in.

Ash shuffled along the narrow woodblock hallway in his boxers. He pointed to the right.

“Kitchen’s over there, grab a couple of plates and put the kettle on. I need to take a piss.”

Ashley sat opposite John Markham as they attacked the heart attack special. Ashley was comfortable in his company. He’d warmed to the man who, only a few months ago, had been a complete stranger. Markham had come to his rescue not once but twice now in such a short period of time.

“Getting pissed out of your brain won’t help things, y’know, Ash,” John Markham mumbled with a half-eaten sausage in his mouth.

Ashley looked up, swirled the warm tea around the cup, smiled at his colleague.

“You’re wrong, John. Getting hammered always helps.”

“Don’t be stupid, Ash, you —”

Ashley nodded his head. “It does, John, it helps. I had a great time yesterday afternoon feeling sorry for myself. It gave me time to think.”

“About what?”

“About what sort of shit job we are both doing, about what’s happening to the world, about having to think long and hard before we say something in case someone else interprets it in a totally different way. What right has anyone got to call me a racist?”

“Look, Ash, it ain’t that bad —”

“John, I’m suspended, for fuck’s sake, how bad can it get? I’m hanging onto my career by the skin of my teeth.”

John Markham stood up, walked around the table, and placed a comforting hand on his pal’s shoulder.

“Remember yesterday, Ash? Remember I was telling you about Roddam?”

Ashley scratched his head, couldn’t remember anything about a conversation involving Roddam. John continued.

“Rod dam’s a good guy, he likes you. He’s spoken with the suit who reported you.” John Markham turned to face Ashley, threw a smile that said you owe me one.