Free Requiem Mass by Elizabeth Corley Page A

one relief at least, but inspecting the force’s dirty linen was nobody’s favourite job.
    The Chief Constable still hadn’t set up a central complaints department but expected the ACC to ensure there was no hint of any complaint not being followed through effectively. The force had received forty-eight complaints the previous year, all logged and notified to the PCA. Nearly half had been dropped in the end; complaints and accusations often went away when tempers cooled. Many of the others had been resolved informally, members of the public reluctant to go through a time-consuming formal process. The remainder, though, received the full works.
    It was hell for the force officer put in charge of the investigation either way. If you screwed it up, and that was found out, your career was finished. If you found there weregenuine grounds for complaint you had the difficult choice of blowing the whistle and finding it hard to live with your colleagues or keeping quiet and it becoming impossible to live with yourself.
    Fenwick was known to be scrupulously fair, so black and white they had nicknamed him the Zebra at HQ. He was diligent enough to be relied upon to do a thorough job, tough enough to take the crap and sufficiently intelligent to see through the deceptions that would be put his way. In other words, the perfect fall guy.
    At least there were only two complaints. Fenwick scanned the rest of the files quickly. Half of them could be ignored straight away. They were cases so old, and more importantly so trivial, that they had obviously been added to make up the weight of the pile. The rest was paperwork, statistics for reports to be completed by the end of the month. Cursing the ACC he settled behind the scarred desk in the cramped cubicle and thought almost affectionately of his old office at Division, in Harlden.
     
    Fenwick opened the first complaint file later in the long, dull day and consoled himself with the thought that at least he would be home before the children were in bed. Half an hour later he was still reading, oblivious of the time. He then tried to telephone around the area to talk to the various officers involved and spent over an hour tracking them down and taking notes. His luck was in as he discovered that the duty sergeant he needed to talk to was about to come off shift and he drank two cups of tea in the canteen whilst he confirmed the main details and filled in the blanks.
    It was nearly six o’clock when a casual ‘good night’ from someone in the corridor reminded him that he had been planning to leave early. One of the many disadvantages of working at HQ was that it added another forty-five minutes to his journey home. He reached for the telephone to make his guilty apology.
    The receiver was picked up within three rings.
    ‘Hello, 526592, whospeaking please?’ A breathy falsettotold him that his call had been answered by the brightest star in his personal constellation.
    ‘Hi, Bess, it’s Daddy. Why aren’t you in bed yet?’
    ‘Daddy! I’m waiting up for you. Nanny says I can ’cos I didn’t see you much yesterday.’ She paused. ‘You are coming home soon, aren’t you?’
    ‘Not for a while yet, sweetheart. I’m afraid I’m going to be at work a little longer.’
    ‘Oh.’ The disappointed whisper spoke volumes. He strained to hear whether there were tears there too.
    ‘What have you done today then? Was being back at school fun?’ Normal conversation helped Fenwick even if he doubted it would work on his five-and-a-half-year-old daughter.
    ‘No, school was horrid, really, really horrid. Mrs Goss was cross with us all day and we weren’t allowed to play outside ’cos of the rain, and smelly Jimmy Barnes hit Christopher over the head with a spade when they were playing with the sand, and made it bleed, and I got told off and it wasn’t even fair ’cos I didn’t do anything. Just ’cos I gave Chris my hankie for the blood. It was horrid!’
    Fenwick was immediately