Free Sorrow Bound by David Mark

trying to get herattention. She even has the odd Friday night out on Cleethorpes seafront. Has some fancy sequinned dresses and painful strappy shoes. Knows how to do her make-up and ruffle her short hair in a way that takes the attention away from her broad shoulders and weightlifter thighs. She’s okay with herself.
    So why are you so giddy, you silly girl?
    Helen tries to focus on the half of the computer screen she gets paid to give a damn about. She’s cross-referencing between two databases, trying to spot any familiar names among the owners of white, 2003-registered Land Rovers. Such a vehicle was captured on blurry CCTV, heading away at speed from a petrol bombing on the Preston Road estate. The target was an empty bottle shop, and the motive most likely insurance or boredom. It comes under Helen’s purview because she is attached to Colin Ray’s investigation into the spike in organised crime, and because there had once been a Drugs Squad raid on the shop amid accusations it was being used as a halfway house for cocaine coming off the nearby docks. That raid had proven fruitless, but with the top brass happy to throw resources at making the drugs problem go away before the end-of-year figures are collated, anything with even a sniff of organised criminality about it comes to Colin Ray, and anything he doesn’t think is worth his time goes to Shaz Archer, who dutifully passes it on to the people she likes least.
    Having already wasted a morning on the entertaining but fruitless trip to Hull Prison, Helen is resigned to a day of futility and irritation, made worse by the buzzing flies and oppressive heat. She had been gutted to hear that Pharaoh was looking into the murder off Anlaby Road. Tremberg is an ambitious woman, hoping to be put forward for the sergeant examination, andhad cautiously celebrated when placed on Colin Ray’s side of the squad not so long ago. That joy has faded now. She is on a unit that is making no progress, led by a man who is at best tenacious, and at worst, dangerous. Her immediate superior is a tart who doesn’t rate her and the last bit of work Helen did that in any way helped make the east coast a safer place was when she put Colin Ray in the back of a taxi before he made good on his promise to cut DC Andy Daniells’s head off with a glass bottle at the last CID quiz night.
    Her computer suddenly beeps and Helen takes a deep breath. Her left leg bounces up and down.
    Stop it, you silly girl …
    She opens the email. It’s him. Mark. The one she can’t get out of her bloody head.
    Couldn’t wait another minute to hear from you. I have no excuse. Are we not past that? Do I need to pretend I have something work-related to discuss? I just wanted to send you a message. Honestly Helen, even seeing your name written down makes me excited. What are you doing to me? Tell me something personal. Can’t wait. Xx
    Helen smiles and exhales at the same time. She rubs the back of her hand across her face, and prepares to compose a reply. She’s no poet. She wishes she’d read the Philip Larkin collection McAvoy had sent her when she was in hospital a few months back. Wishes, even more, that McAvoy himself were here. There are few moments when she is not second-guessing herself in his voice, wondering whether he would approve of her decisions, her police work, her heart. He has somehow become her conscience.
    Her thoughts drift to his wife. Helen knows what McAvoy did for her. Remembers that day in the greasy spoon café when her senior officer opened up. Told her about the men who hurt Roisin when she was not yet a teen. McAvoy was just a constable then. A young man in uniform, called to a traveller camp. A man who heard screams and went to investigate. Who carried the crying girl from a burning building and did things to her attackers that scarred his soul. Helen has never asked him what he did to those men. Never asked how he and the child he saved came to be lovers as adults. She has not