Free Made To Be Broken by Rebecca Bradley

ineffectual, in the grand scheme of what she was going through, saying she could return to the home that was already hers didn’t feel enough.
    He wanted to do something of substance for her.
    He wanted to do what he’d do when she was little and protect her from the world. Protect her from what she was facing. He wanted to rub the scrape better and stop it hurting, put some magic cream on the cut, turn the light on when a nightmare invaded the dark, but none of that applied here and all he had was a home, her home and he could continue to be her father.
    And he’d do that with everything he had in him.

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    Grey’s office door was closed. His PA was outside. I couldn’t for the life of me remember her name but I liked her. She always had a smile and a bag of sweets on her desk.
    ‘Has he gone out?’
    ‘Oh no, he’s in, he asked that you go straight through.’
    She proffered the bag from the desk at me. I peered inside and saw Murray Mints.
    I smiled. ‘I’d better not, thank you. Can you imagine if I took one and was busy sucking on it while trying to talk to him? I wouldn’t be able to speak!’
    ‘Why do you think I eat them? It stops me interrupting him when he’s speaking to me.’ She winked. I couldn’t help but smile again. Such a stressful day but I was smiling again.
    ‘Here,’ she picked one out and held it up, ‘take it for later. You never know when it might come in useful.’
    ‘Thank you,’ I whispered to his adorable PA as I moved past her into his office.
    She smiled in response and put her head back down.
     
    Grey’s office was neat and sparse. Grey was neat and sparse. Saturday morning and I was sitting in front of him, having come into work because the job demanded that extra push of senior investigating officers. We didn’t have set hours. If a case was running, then we were running as well. With no extra pay. It was just the way it was. However, lower-ranking officers who came in were on overtime when a murder was being investigated. At the minute we didn’t know what we had, but it was suspicious so we were all working.
    There was too much to do. Too much of a coincidence. Even if it didn’t turn out to be murder, people were dying. We couldn’t speak to the school this weekend, but we could interview the witnesses from the bus and we could access Finlay’s friends while they were out of school and their parents were off work. Better for them that they had parents around to support them at this time.
    I waited for Grey to finish the email he was typing out, the concentration making his face frown. He was a man I rarely saw smile. At his level of command there was a lot more paperwork and meetings, more log keepings and oversight. It was a reason I didn’t want to go for promotion again. I would rather get my hands dirty and get out of the building with my team and get involved. Shuffling papers suited Grey. I couldn’t imagine him meeting members of the public in times of crisis. He’d be one step ahead wondering what papers needed filling in and wouldn’t have his full focus on the person he was speaking with. Pretty much like he was with his colleagues.
    He dropped his finger to his keyboard with a flourish, which I took to mean he had sent whatever he was doing and he sat back and looked at me. ‘What is it, Hannah?’
    ‘I’ve had an uncomfortable phone conversation with Jack not ten minutes ago and now have the report we discussed printed out from the email he sent me. It’s the PM on the young lad, Finlay McDonnell.’
    Silence.
    ‘The blood work came back from the toxicology screening. He pushed it through as urgent and with specific requests attached.’
    Still nothing.
    ‘Sir, Finlay McDonnell died from digoxin toxicity.’
    Grey leaned forward in his seat. ‘What are you saying, Hannah?’
    He really wanted this spelling out to him. ‘I’m saying that we now have two people who have died of digoxin poisoning, neither of whom were on digoxin and