Free High-Wired by Andrea Frazer

Groves caught him under the armpits as he went down – thank God she was a tall officer – and Dr MacArthur rushed out of the room to find a chair to rest him on.
    ‘Well fielded, Groves. We’ll make a cricketer out of you yet,’ Hardy congratulated her. It wouldn’t do to bring this poor man home with a concussion. He’d been through enough as it was.
    Dr MacArthur opened his mouth to make some comments on the injuries to the young man’s body, but was effectively silenced by Hardy who delivered a swift kick to his right shin. ‘This man’s been through hell today, Dylan. Don’t make it any the worse for him by saying things that are bound to give him nightmares. I’ll speak to you on the phone later, and you can spout forth to your heart’s content to me.’
    Draping an arm each of Dunbar’s round their shoulders, and making quite an off-kilter sight with their difference in height, they assisted him back to the car, leaving the FME rubbing his shin and swearing under his breath about police brutality.
    Dunbar was recovered a little by the time they returned to his home, and they found the female officer and Judith Filey sitting on the sofa in the living room with Mrs Dunbar, comforting her. As they entered, Mrs Dunbar shot to her feet.
    ‘I want to see him, too,’ she announced immediately. ‘It was him, wasn’t it, Clive, and not some dreadful mistake?’
    ‘It’s him, Mary love, but I’ve seen him and he’s at peace now.’
    ‘Then I can go, too?’ Her face was unnaturally eager in the circumstances, and, thought Hardy, her body language made imminent hysteria a distinct possibility.
    ‘Not today, love. Maybe tomorrow,’ replied her husband wearily. It was only early afternoon, but he felt as if the day had already lasted forever.
    ‘You promise? Promise me, Clive!’ shrieked Mrs Dunbar, confirming what Hardy had thought of her current mental state. Judith Filey interrupted at this point to say, ‘I’ve persuaded Mary that she and Clive ought to come to stay with me, just for a few days while things settle down.’ She had foreseen an intense press interest, and thought that it would be better if they weren’t available to anyone from the media that cared to call at their home.
    ‘I’ve got a different surname, so there’s no way the press could find me easily. And I think they could do with the company. I’ll phone their workplaces and sort everything out, and I’ll take a few days off myself. They’ll be in good hands, Inspector.’
    Hardy heartily agreed with this suggestion. As they were preparing to leave for Judith’s, the uniformed constable offered to go with them, but the two women said it wasn’t necessary, although Hardy recommended it for a couple of hours at least, so that they could ask any further questions that occurred to them.
    Once Hardy and Groves arrived back at the office, there was the usual stuff to deal with, things that Uniform could handle for now: shoplifting, aggressive begging, domestic fallouts. The events of the morning had done nothing to lift Groves’s spirits at the imminent arrival of her husband, soon to be back to the bosom – and a few other parts – of his wife, and she would do everything within her power to prolong her working day.
    Having ascertained that the uniformed officers were dealing with the domestics, Groves took a break for lunch – a very late lunch as it happened – promising to interview those shoplifters arrested during the course of the morning when she came back. She took her full hour, eating in a small café that specialised in liver and bacon, enjoying one of their generous servings with the wry thought that the condemned woman ate a hearty lunch, before returning to the station to string out the interviews she would conduct that afternoon, spinning them out for as long as possible.
    When every guest in their ‘special rooms’ had been dealt with, she went back to her desk to type up the notes, something that should