Never Forget by Lisa Cutts

September
    A nother hangover, another day at work. I’d stayed at Stan’s until the early hours and, although while there I’d only had a couple of glasses of wine, I’d gone home and drowned my sorrows. It wasn’t just the alcohol, it was the lack of sleep, and this was day eight on duty. I was already tired when I got to work.
    I sat through that morning’s briefing taking in all the information we had so far on the murders of Amanda Bell and Jason Holland, but distracted by the previous evening’s events and the dull thud in the left side of my head. I didn’t have much to add. The enquiries Wingsy and I had finished before we’d gone home yesterday hadn’t moved matters on at all. Other colleagues had more important and relevant information to impart. I listened and made notes. An update was given on David Connor, who was being charged after the briefing with football-related GBH, plus possession of a few offensive weapons, but bailed regarding Operation Guard. It seemed we hadn’t amassed enough evidence on him. The scale of work in store for the team was breathtaking.
    An hour and a half later, when the briefing finished, there was the usual stampede for the toilets and tea machine. I found Pierre coming out of the kitchen with two mugs of tea.
    ‘Made you one,’ he said, handing me the cup. ‘There’s no sugar in it.’
    ‘Thanks. That’s good of you,’ I said, thinking that he was pretty thoughtful as well as decent-looking. I hoped that my eyes weren’t still bloodshot; that might put him off.
    We took our drinks to a couple of spare computers in the middle of the Incident Room. The position was hardly ideal, but the room was full of DCs and DSs trying to gather their paperwork and sort out the logistics of their day.
    Pierre told me a bit about himself and how long he’d been on the squad. He made me laugh a few times and I had to check myself to make sure I wasn’t doing my over-the-top giggling. I didn’t want to look like an idiot or far too keen. While we were chatting, Pierre passed me names and addresses to enter into the system so that we could research our witnesses for the day. Once we were armed with everything we needed, we gathered up our files and equipment and went in search of a car. That was our first stumbling block. Forty minutes later, having negotiated some keys from someone else, we made our way to the yard and found our newly allocated car for the day.
    Our first visit was to see a woman called Josie Newman. She was an old friend of Amanda Bell’s and lived about eight miles away from the nick. Pierre drove and I did a recap of what we had been able to find out about her. ‘She lives with her mum and there’s a suggestion that they were once a mother-and-daughter prostitute team. Previous for drugs, which would figure due to the prostitution. Nothing much else on them, though.’
    We decided which of us would speak to the mum in case they were both at home, and ran over what we wanted to ask. With that out of the way, I started to pry into Pierre’s private life. I thought I’d try a subtle approach to begin with, revving it up if the need arose.
    ‘Had a bit of a late one last night,’ I said as casually as possible.
    ‘Oh, yeah. Did you go anywhere good?’ he asked, glancing over at me.
    ‘A very old friend needed a visit. It was great to see him but I stayed longer than I intended to.’ Why had I said that?
    ‘Lucky you, Nina,’ came the reply.
    ‘Oh, no. No, he really is an old friend. And he’s old. Very old. We were just catching up. What about you? Did you get up to much last night or did you have a late finish at work?’
    ‘I left at about eleven. Just went home and tried to get some sleep. It’s going to be a very long couple of weeks.’
    ‘Yeah. As great as it is to have a few extra quid at the end of the month, right now sleep seems more important.’
    We were nearly at our destination and I still hadn’t confirmed if he was single. I must be