Case One by Chris Ould Page B

the end of their overnight shift. A lot of them looked tired and hassled. Unless you were on authorised overtime you wanted to get your paperwork done before the eight o’clock changeover so you could clock off on time and get home to bed.
    Leaving Sam in the corridor, Holly entered the female locker room where it was quieter and smelled of an odd mixture of perfume and cleaning fluid. Her uniform and personal effects were housed in a dented metal locker near the showers and, after dialling the combination, she pulled out her gear and started to change.
    On the whole there was a relaxed and fairly friendly atmosphere in the locker room, but even so, Holly still didn’t feel she knew the regs well enough to enter into much of the gossip and chit-chat that went on around her. You didn’t have to be in there for very long to realise that the female PCs could be every bit as raunchy and tasteless as the men, but Holly also knew that some of the women tended to moderate what they said when she was around – in particular about sex and booze. Whether that was because they were being protective or because they weren’t sure how she’d take it, Holly couldn’t tell.
    Once she’d pulled on her uniform sweater Holly set about tying her hair back in a ponytail. As she did so she caught part of a conversation between two unseen women in a row of lockers on the far side of the room.
    â€œSo how old was she?”
    â€œFourteen? Something like that.”
    â€œWell, old enough round there then.”
    â€œNah, come on…”
    â€œNo, I’m not saying she wanted it. I’m just saying if you’d got any sense you wouldn’t be wandering round the Kaddy Estate on your own in the dark. I mean, that
is
asking for it. You need more sense than…”
    Holly lost the rest of the conversation in the clang of a locker being closed and a sudden influx of noise from the corridor as the women went out. She finished tying her hair and closed her own locker.
    Would the other PCs have thought differently if they’d seen Ashleigh Jarvis lying in the road? Probably not. Did it matter? Again, probably not. Holly knew that everyone here would tell you the same thing: don’t get emotionally involved, stay objective. It was the only way to deal with the job.
    She finished tying her hair and closed her own locker, quietly.
    As he pushed against the door into the canteen Sam almost walked into PC Bob Mulvey.
    â€œWhoa there, tiger!” Mulvey said like he was the first one to ever use the phrase.
    â€œRight,” Sam said. He made to move on but Mulvey continued to block the door. “Where’s your girlfriend?” he asked, looking along the corridor.
    Sam knew he meant Holly – yet another lame joke – but he didn’t want to give Mulvey the satisfaction of acknowledging it.
    â€œStill in bed, probably,” he said.
    Mulvey frowned. “She should be in by now.”
    â€œIn?” Sam looked puzzled. “Why?”
    â€œI thought she was on this morning. Sergeant Stafford reckons she is.”
    â€œWhy’d he think that?” Sam said. “He doesn’t know her.”
    â€œWhat? What’re you talking about?”
    â€œLucy,” Sam said, plucking a name from the air.
    â€œWho the bloody hell’s Lucy?” Mulvey said, his irritation showing now.
    â€œMy girlfriend,” Sam said, poker-faced. “I thought you said—”
    Mulvey scowled at him. “You taking the piss?”
    â€œWhat? No,” Sam said, feigning genuine confusion. “You said ‘Where’s your girlfriend?’ and—”
    â€œI meant
Holly
,” Mulvey said, cutting him off.
    â€œWhat’s up?” Holly asked as she approached along the corridor, just in time to hear her name.
    Mulvey turned quickly, as if he suspected he was the victim of an elaborate set-up, but when Holly just looked curious the PC was