New Year’s Day
Leo
“Keep your coat on!”
The shout comes as Leo Brady reaches his desk at Cheshire Major Crime Unit at precisely 9:00 a.m. Reluctantly, he buttons his heavy wool overcoat back up and heads to the boss’s office, where Detective Inspector Simon Crouch is standing by his chair. Leo has only walked from the car park to the police station—a few hundred meters at most—but his feet are like ice cubes. He wiggles his toes inside his brogues.Too cold to snow, people keep saying, which has never made sense to Leo.
“I need you to get your fat arse over to Mirror Lake. They’ve had a body wash up.”
Leo happens to be in far better shape than Crouch, whose pale flesh looks as though it’s been molded from lumps of Play-Doh, but this doesn’t stop Crouch asserting his authority through the medium of playground insults.
“Isn’t that in Wales?”
“I didn’t ask for a geography lesson.” Crouch shares his iPad screen to the Smart board on the wall, and for a split second, Leo is treated to the first two lines of everything in Crouch’s inbox. In among the burglary overviews and the violent crime statistics, Leo sees a message from a Joanne Crouch titled “Your mother AGAIN” and an urgent-flagged email from Professional Standards before Google Maps fills the screen.
Leo takes a moment to get his bearings. In the center is a thin, meandering lake marked LLYN DRYCH, through which runs the border between England and Wales. Mirror Lake, Leo knows, although he has never had a job take him that far toward the boundaries of Cheshire Constabulary. A mountain range stands on the northern tip of the lake, and on the west side, just into Wales, is the small village of Cwm Coed. Between the town and the water is a band of green running around the lake.
Crouch points at a patch of green on the eastern side of the lake, at the far end of their area. “Just before you got in, we had a missing person report from here.” He taps his screen, and the map changes to a satellite view. The green is woodland, not grass, Leo realizes: trees packed tightly around the water’s edge. Crouch draws a wonky circle and taps it meaningfully. “This picture’s a couple of years out of date.” He closes the map and swipes through his apps to find Safari. Mail, Weather, Sky News—is thatTinder? “This is what’s there now.”
A website appears on the large screen, a film playing soundlessly in the banner image.It’s a Shore thing…reads the caption. Sun sparkles on the surface of Mirror Lake as the camera swoops closer to a row of wooden cabins at the edge of the water. A laughing child, frozen in midair, swings on a rope above a deck more suited to the Maldives than North Wales. It isn’t a film, Leo now sees, but a computer-generated animation: an artist’s impression of what is clearly a high-end development.
“This is The Shore,” Crouch says. “And don’t get any ideas, because the chances of you affording a place there are on a par with you ever progressing beyond the rank of constable. One of them’s owned by that ex-boxer actor. The one who’s married to her with the massive tits.”
“Who’s the MisPer?”
“The resort’s owner, Rhys Lloyd. Amale opera singer.” Crouch slots the words alongside each other as though the combination were experimental. Crouch refers to himself asa traditionalist, which Leo has found, during the course of his own thirty-six years, is often synonymous withbigoted arsehole. “Very well-known, I’m told,” Crouch goes on. “If you like that sort of thing.”
“I take it you don’t like that sort of thing?”
“Tights and nancy boys? Do you?”
Leo opens his notebook with the attention one might give a portal into another world. “Who reported him missing?”
“His daughter. Rang 999. The wife confirms he didn’t come to bed last night, but apparently that wasn’t unexpected. She thought he was partying or sleeping it off somewhere else. Orhavingit off, maybe.” Crouch snorts.
“Do you want me to speak to the family?”
“Take a gander at the body first. Make sure the Welsh haven’t fucked it up. Local inquiries, last-known movements—the usual. North Wales has sent a detective constable. He’ll meet you at the mortuary.”
“No problem.”
“If it’s an accidental drowning, bat it back to the Welsh DC.” Crouch clears his screen. “He washed up on their side.”
“And if it’s murder?”
“Depends. If it’s going nowhere—”
“Bat it back to Wales?”
“Not as thick as you look, are you?” Crouch waits expectantly. Leo isn’t sure how to answer. “But if there’s a suspect, keep the job, and we’ll get it squared away soon as we can. First murder of the year, done and dusted in a day, boom.”
Boom?Crouch often bemoans the fact that he is never drafted in to give statements to the press, standing on the steps of the court, or next to the fluttering tape of a murder scene. Based on what Leo has seen of his boss, this is a wise decision on the part of the comms team.
It’s more than an hour from Major Crime’s offices to the force boundary. The sky is bright blue, the streets full of people chasing away hangovers and the excesses of Christmas. A walk in the fresh air. Perhaps a pint or a Bloody Mary.New year, new you.
Leo listens to a phone-in on 5 Live and feels a crushing sense of despair at the passing of another year with nothing to show for it. He’s still living in a shitty flat with a neighbor who burns herbs in a tin by her door to ward off evil spirits. He’s still working for a boss who belittles and bullies him on a daily basis. And he’s still doing nothing about it.
Leo taps the screen on his phone and listens to the ringtone fill the car’s speakers.