Free Deadly Friends by Stuart Pawson

initiative would meet the muggers and vandals and drug pushers head-on, make them realise that they had no future in the New Society. Suddenly, we had Society again. They made it sound as if our towns and villages would be flooded with policemen. You’d be able to walk your dog at two in the morning, safe in the knowledge that a friendly bobby would be standing on every street corner.
    I pulled out my calculator and typed 5,000 into it. Divide by forty-three forces, except that the Met would get the lion’s share, then by the seventeen divisions in East Pennine and the number of stations in Heckley. We cover twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week, but each officer only works five eight-hour shifts. I tapped the appropriate keys. Then there’s holidays, training courses and sick leave. I hit the equals button and watched as minute electrical forces shuffledmolecules into new locations, spelling out a number. It said that at any given time the citizens of Heckley would have the benefit of an extra 0.49 of a policeman on duty. Allowing for meal breaks, paperwork and time in court, it worked out as the equivalent of a rooky wolf cub. Halle-flipping-lujah.
    I did a report for Makinson and caught up with the burglaries. Lunch was a mug of tea. The doctor in Wandsworth was on his rounds, I was told, but I’d catch him about ten to four. Sparky rang to say that they’d found nothing of interest at the squat and Nigel told me that Skinner’s brother-in-law had been traced. He’d be having a word with him shortly.
    It had never looked good, and then it all fell to pieces. Nigel came in with the till receipts and they sounded just like the one a Traffic officer from Cambridgeshire described to me. The doctor in Wandsworth verified that he had been contacted by Dr Jordan, and Skinner had collected his prescriptions from him like a good little boy. Jim and Mary were stalwarts of the local church and supported Skinner’s story, and finally, we didn’t have a weapon.
    ‘Let him go,’ Superintendent Wood said.
    ‘Let him go,’ Chief Superintendent Isles concurred.
    ‘You can go,’ I told Skinner. The only bright spot was the thought of the look on Makinson’s sunburnt face when he learnt the news, and I wondered how I could wangle being there at the time.
    I hung around in the office until I knew the BambooCurtain would be open and had my favourite, duck in plum sauce, for tea, washed down with a pint of lager. There was no reason why I shouldn’t have a little celebration of my own. The place was almost empty, so early in the evening, and the proprietor came and shared a pot of Chinese tea with me, on the house. Later, it would be rowdy with drunks, but the staff would serve them with patience and courtesy, their contempt suppressed by ten thousand years of oppression.
    There were no messages on my ansaphone but the postman had made a delivery. The various financial organisations that knew my address were suggesting that now was the time to reorganise my lifestyle and the house insurance was due. I binned most of it and had a shower.
    I had no clean shirts. Well, no decent ones. I don’t wear designer clothes and automatically reject anything with the label on the outside. If they want me to advertise their wares they should pay me, or at least bring their prices down. All jeans are made from the same material on the same machines to the same measurements. Only the labels vary, with perhaps an odd row of decorative stitching. I buy mine in the market at half price. I pulled on a pair that had that washed-once look, when the colour is at its brightest.
    There is one exception to my aversion to style. Wrangler do a shirt that has a row of mother-of-pearl press-studs down the front instead of buttons, and thefirst time I saw one I thought that one day all shirts would be like that. Harold Wilson was at Number Ten at the time, but Scott McKenzie was at number one. I found a faded example in the recesses of the wardrobe