The One a Month Man by Michael Litchfield

original, like the Nick?’
    ‘Don’t smart-arse me, Mike Lorenzo!’
    ‘Spunky as ever,’ I said, blithely.
    ‘No, that’s
your
department.’
    The template was set for the rest of the assignment.
     
    Sarah Cable, like me, had what’s known among fellow cops as a history, the sort of baggage that was always easier for guys to shoulder than the girls, so it was supposed, though I’m not convinced. She’d been locked in a bad marriage with a fellow cop, who was a coward on the streets but always ready for rough stuff in the bedroom. When she filed an official complaint about his behaviour, she was warned about the consequences of ‘rocking the boat’. Her immediate superior told her to ‘think about it carefully’ and not to do anything that would reflectbadly on the force. While reflecting, she was treated to a special beating. Next day, after undergoing repairs in the A&E department of her local general hospital, she returned home to find her husband in bed with a woman police sergeant, who was naked except for her uniform-hat, worn at a jaunty angle. Her husband was also naked, except for the handcuffs that fastened him to a bedpost. Sarah booted the woman downstairs and into the small back garden. Still in a rage, she bounded upstairs and threw the woman sergeant’s clothes out the window, including the key to unlock the handcuffs.
    ‘Well, well, well,’ she said, suddenly icily calm. ‘How grateful I am to your
lady
friend! Now I’ve got you exactly where I’ve wanted you these past two miserable, sodding years – totally helpless and at my mercy. Oh, boy! I intend to break your head and your balls. Only two questions remain: what with and in which order?’
    She chose his riot-stick, which was hanging behind the door. As for the order, she decided to work her way upwards; sort of symbolic.
    ‘You’ve always been one for clubbing in the West End, now let’s see how you enjoy my home-sweet-home version,’ she taunted him.
    He pleaded with her to be ‘reasonable’ and not to behave like an asylum seeker;
asylum
as in a place for the insane.
    ‘I’m mad, all right,’ she rounded on him, though still composed. ‘And now you’re going to sample my madness. It looked to me as if you were lapping up being roughed up. Bet I can improve on
her
handiwork, though.’
    His subsequent screams alerted neighbours who called the police. Something of a joke, really; a parallel of one of those yarns:
I’m going to send for the police. No need, I AM the police
.
    Sarah’s husband spent two weeks in hospital and a further three months convalescing, during which time she was suspended from duty. Wisely, he chose not to bring charges forassault and battery, a decision that was greeted with much relief by the image-conscious top brass, but disappointed Sarah. The court case would have been very messy and tailor-made for the front pages of the tabloids. Sarah would gladly have gone to prison in exchange for seeing her husband publicly pilloried. Instead of a sordid trial, followed by gaol, she was privately reprimanded and reinstated, then transferred to the Met from her Home Counties provincial force. And that’s how we came to be partners, then pals, and finally something more. Perhaps the reference to
finally
is somewhat premature. The ending has still to be written. Most of the other cops within my orbit were wary of her. ‘Watch her, she’s bad news; bad as gaol-bait,’ was the kind of malicious warning repeatedly whispered in my ear. I took no notice, of course. My marriage had been reduced to flotsam, washed up on a succession of storm-tides. I was drinking too much, gambling too heavily, and bed-hopping like a flea with an itch of its own. Neither Sarah nor I had any right to be judgmental, which was the one thing we had in common. We respected each other’s demons and tried to give them a wide berth. Skeletons were best left buried. Dig them up and they could be the most troublesome ghosts, more