Page 8 of Indefensible
“I expected the music fromHigh Plains Drifterto begin. I mean, everyone looked at me as I walked in, and they all laughedat the americano comment. So, I asked for pie as a joke, and they laughed some more and offered cheese and onion pasty, shepherd's pie and something called iced fingers. I don’t even know what the last two are. Apparently homemade by the co-op, which sounded promising, but I think they came from a factory.”
“They did,” Deryn said. “The Co-op is a supermarket chain. I hope you didn’t eat anything?”
“I tried an iced finger, but it was just a bread roll with icing. A sort of small hot dog roll.”
“Probably better than the pasty anyway. And that’s where you found out about Mason being a Scout leader? Did he do that in the States?”
Murphy laughed. “Mason? He was drunk most of the time. Hardly someone to set a good example to young folk. Anyway, they told me who to talk to, and after I had managed to eat my roll, I went to find him.” His face became serious. “The guy I spoke to was worried. They expected him at Cubs last night, but he didn’t turn up, and didn’t call, which was odd, because he was usually reliable. And this guywillmake a statement to that effect.”
“I’ll talk to him,” Deryn said.
“You can’t, or not until tonight. There’s a meeting of all the volunteers at the Scout Hut, at six. The Scout Hut that Mason paid for. I’ve got the address.”
CHAPTER 6
DAY TWO
After a surprisingly relaxing lunch with Brody Murphy, it was back to the grind. Deryn was one of the last into the briefing room. It smelled of sweat and damp nylon. The April weather was unseasonably warm, but his uniformed colleagues still had to wear their hi-vis jackets and carry heavy equipment. It didn’t make for a comfortable body temperature. Deryn was thankful never to have walked a beat, laden with gear, thanks to the Police Now National Detective Programme. He was fit, worked out regularly, but no one would call him beefy. He blended in as well as he could, wearing black, keeping his hair short and saving even the most discreet jewellery and make-up for when he was home alone.
DI Glover cleared her throat, ready to start, and the room went quiet.
“Sammi Powell and Ky Mossman,” she said, giving Deryn a glance as he took his seat, packed amongst his peers. “Both found dead in their home in Cwmcoed, leaving their son, Joe Powell, aged four months.” A picture appeared of the parents with baby Joe in happier times. “Post mortems to be carried out today or tomorrow, but the circumstances in which they were found are suggestive of accidental drug overdose.” She flickedpictures of the scene in Sammi and Ky’s living room onto the screen. There was a close-up of the syringe still attached to Ky’s arm, and another of the lines of white powder on the low table, as well as the drug-taking debris on the carpet. “Toxicology on the bodies won’t be quick, but the lab has analysed the drugs found at the scene. The white powder on the table is cocaine, and the remnants in the spoon and syringe are heroin with traces of fentanyl. It’s a lethal combination, as you can see. We need to find out how far it’s spread, warn people about it and catch the dealers. Because other people are going to die if this stuff is on the streets.”
She took a breath, and a drink of coffee from a cardboard cup. From her appearance, Deryn thought she must have been up most of the night. Her hair looked slightly oily, as if she’d been running her hands through it repeatedly, and there were dark circles under her eyes. “I’ve been talking to colleagues at the National Crime Agency. There have been a few batches of heroin mixed with fentanyl around the country over the last couple of years, and they have all led to people dying.” The next slide showed a picture of a small blue pill labelled ‘legal’ next to a slightly larger, rougher-looking blue pill labelled ‘illegal.’
“It’s not easy to tell the difference between legal, medicinal fentanyl, and something made in a garage,” Glover said. “The problem is that the active ingredient is so incredibly powerful that the tiniest bit can kill. Fake pill makers don’t have the quality control of the big pharmaceutical companies. Your pill might have enough fentanyl in it to kill you, or none at all.”
“Easy enough to smuggle,” one of the uniformed officers commented, and Glover nodded. She flicked to a new image — a map of the UK with clusters of spots around some of the big cities. It was labelled ‘Accidental Overdoses linked to Fentanyl.’ Glasgow had the most spots. And now it was here.
“Where does it come from?” another officer asked.
This time Glover shrugged. “Probably the US. It’s much cheaper than heroin, as well as fifty times stronger. Bring a bottle of tablets in, or get them in the post, grind them up and use it to cut your regular H. Tiny quantities go a long way, so it’s perfect for smugglers. I’m told it’s a much better high, though it might be your last. We need to get this stuff off the streets.”
Deryn thought a couple of the other officers were giving him the side-eye, but that might be his paranoid imagination. Was Glover sending him to see his brother-in-law’s customers because they would let him in where other cops would be turned away? Was she setting him up? There was a contradiction between making use of his family connections and using them against him. He didn’t know which it was. His stomach clenched with a sudden pain. He was walking a tightrope and starting to wobble. Whichever way he fell, his police career would be over, almost before it had begun.
Phillip had called Deryn adirty pervert.As Phillip himself was a drug dealer, as well as being up to his eyes in the family ‘transport’ business, which involved transporting illegal merchandise of all kinds alongside more legitimate items, he had no business calling Deryn anything. But he had caught Deryn wearing a tight dress, stockings, make-up and high heeled shoes, which was apparently much worse than modern day smuggling, selling stolen goods, tax dodging and consorting with criminals. In the real world, it probably was. Phillip might get caught, arrested, and if he were very unlucky, charged and convicted. If he finished up inside, it wouldn’t be fun, but the family would go to visit, make sure he had everything he needed, and welcome him with open arms when he was released.
None of that would happen if Deryn was caught by his family. His late father had been free with his fists in defence of hisprejudices, prejudices shared by the rest of his siblings. Deryn’s oldest brother, Maldwyn, had been forced to leave when their father discovered he was gay, and then erased from memory as if he had never existed. Deryn hadn’t been born when Maldwyn left, so most of what he knew about his oldest brother he had learned by listening at doors. He knew his mother had visited Mal and been to his wedding. His brother Huw and his young family had moved to be closer to Mal and his husband. Secrets. Things Deryn wasn’t supposed to know, just as he had secrets of his own. Well, one big secret.
There were cross dressers on TV, in the theatre and in Hollywood. Grayson Perry was even a ‘sir.’ But Deryn had heard colleagues compare ‘people like that’ to paedophiles. He had listened to men in the break room and the gym boasting of how they would beat up gay men and anyone else whose face didn’t fit. The idea of sharing your pronouns was treated with contempt. He was a man and could only ever be a manor else.
Deryn thought he wouldn’t mind if he never saw any member of his family ever again. Well, he would miss his mother and Huw, but he would miss his job far more. Phillip had made it very clear that the information about Deryn’sperversionwould be shared with his employers as well as his family, and the village where he grew up. He was never allowed to forget that he’d been fast-tracked to detective because of the degree the family business had paid for. Or that he lived in a flat his father had bought, and drove a car, ditto. Deryn would have rather taken out student loans than be beholden to the Kents, but his father had paid the bills, asking only that Deryn stay in south Wales once he graduated. South Wales being a big place, he’d agreed.
When his father had died, Deryn had thought he was free. Until Phillip burst unannounced into Deryn’s flat with a‘borrowed’ key, when Deryn had become Dee, and everything turned to shit.
“It looks like you are finally a useful member of this family,” Phillip had said. “The best bit is, we won’t need topayyou to look the other way.” He had started laughing, told Deryn he looked pathetic, and sauntered out of Deryn’s flat, singing Abba’s'Dancing Queen' in a horrible voice.
Since then, Deryn had looked away. If he saw school kids on bikes passing packages to people in parked cars, he looked away. If he heard that a shop window had been smashed because protection money hadn’t been paid, he took no action. If houses were illegally let, rubbish illegally dumped, or so-and-so was running a brothel, he was careful not to find out more. No part of it sat right with him. He was a detectiveto protect the most vulnerableand he was failing, and all because of something he couldn’t change.
He had hidden his women’s clothes, make-up and elegant shoes more than once, vowing never to dress again. The vow never lasted long, because spending time as Dee was such a small thing that harmed no one and gave him a break. When he was sick of kowtowing to Phillip and his family, he could spend some time as Dee. Dee wasn’t a copper, wasn’t violent, and liked pretty things. She threatened no one, but she never got to go out, or meet other people like herself. Everyone from American evangelists to his brother-in-law, via the UK Supreme Court, told him that there were only two genders, and what you were born was what you must stay. There was no room for people who were both male and female, unless you were unassailably rich or famous or both. So, Dee stayed a secret.
He’d added bolts to his front door, and blinds to the curtains at the windows. If he had been careful before, he was doubly careful now. There was a name for the person he was: genderfluid. Other genderfluid people were out and proud, andif he got away from his family, maybe he could be one of them. But even the threat of leaving might be enough to trigger Phillip’s desire to humiliate him, Deryn. Dee wanted to go out, to meet other people like herself but she was afraid. Not after Phillip had caught her. And jeered, like Dee was an ugly fake.
Only he wasn’t prepared to look away any longer. Holding baby Joe’s little body in his arms had flipped a switch. Phillip could cost him his job in any number of ways, but it was getting harder to remember why it mattered.
The briefing ground to an end. Deryn had more visits to make and had promised Brody he would go to the Scout leaders’ meeting at six, but he decided to start with a call to the social worker who had taken charge of baby Joe.
For a wonder she answered her phone. “He’s in foster care, thanks for asking, while we look for somewhere permanent. Though it’s awful, really. They did love him you know, his parents. It was just the drugs. I blame the police. All this talk about the war on drugs, but nothing changes.” She laughed, to indicate that she wasn’t blaming him. She didn’t need to. He blamed himself enough for both of them.
