Free Did The Earth Move? by Carmen Reid

maybe, just maybe, took something she said or did for them to heart and got out, changed, stopped coming back for more.
    Almost an hour of reading later and it was time for her first interviewee of the day, 19-year-old Darren Gilbert. Picked up by the police in a stolen car with a package of cocaine in the boot – nice.
    He shuffled into her office, baseball hat jammed onto bald, shaven head. Hands shoved deep into pockets.
    'Hello, Darren,' she said, but made it sound as headmistressy as possible. Even she thought he looked hard for a 19-year-old. He was wearing a tight red tracksuit top and baggy denim jeans that she recognized as some hip and culty label. Teenagers and their pathetic label fetishes! As if some label made you a better person or brought you closer to Posh and Becks. A metal ID bracelet and watch clanked together on his wrist.
    He fell back into the chair, hoicked a heavily trainered foot up onto his knee and let it rest against the side of her desk, where she tried to ignore it.
    So they did the interview, Eve making it clear she wasn't buying much of his 'just helping somebody out... didn't know the car was stolen' story.
    'Has it ever occurred to you, Darren, that the owner of the "minicab" office is some hard nut drug dealer?'
    'Nah,' he replied, but so unconvincingly she knew he'd already figured out exactly what was going on.
    'You're just 19 and you're working for the kind of bloke who will probably send someone to put a bullet through your knees if you mess up. Nice one. And I don't think your mum is going to be too chuffed with you either, is she?' She'd read the case notes, she knew his mother was an A&E nurse.
    Darren didn't say anything to this, but she had his full attention now, absolutely no doubt about it.
    Then came the bit where she spelled out her rules and explained to Darren what he was going to have to do if he didn't want to spend time in jail in the future. She liked to use as many 'tough cop' phrases as possible because teenagers raised on a diet of gangster films seemed to respond to that: 'Show some respect', 'Are you the man?' All that kind of thing.
    'Maybe we can even train you up to do something a little bit more useful,' she told him at the end of her spiel.
    Darren was looking out of the window, so she couldn't read the expression on his face. But the ankle had come off the knee, the trainer off the edge of the table. Oh, I'm really quite good at this, she couldn't help thinking.
    'OK,' she started to write in his file now, 'we have another appointment next week. In the meantime, lie low. If you're contacted by the cab office, tell them you're not going to get anyone into trouble, but you can't help them out any more.'
    Darren had hardly slouched his way out of the office when there was a rap on the door and Lester, her boss, put his head round.
    'Hello, Eve, have you got a few minutes for a chat?' he asked.
    'Yeah sure,' she replied.
    'Big news,' he said, closing the door behind him and sitting down at her desk.
    'Good news or bad news?' she wondered.
    'Oh good, very good.' He smiled at her, folded his hands together with the index fingers pointing up under his chin and challenged her to guess.
    'We're all getting a six-week sabbatical to go on a team building course in Tuscany?'
    'No.'
    'No? Didn't think so somehow.'
    'I've got a new job and I'm leaving in six months' time.'
    'Oh God!' was all she could manage for a moment, because it was such a surprise, but then she rallied and added, 'Lester, that's great, fantastic – but how the hell are we going to manage without you?'
    'Well...'
    'And where are you going?' she interrupted.
    'Out of London. I've finally found a nice little position doing this job in a bigger department in Ipswich. Trish's family is from round there, as you know, so we're going to sell up, buy a place out in the countryside, get some dogs, hopefully the kids will come and visit once in a while, but you know teenagers ...'
    'Indeed I do. Personally and