Page 5 of The Other Side

Drum walked to the police station from the train. High Burton was one of the largest market towns in the area. It was here he’d been taken to after he’d walked into a village with no memory of who he was or where he’d come from. They’d estimated he was ten but didn’t know for sure.

High Burton didn’t seem to have changed much since he was last here. It was an attractive town set on a hill with a mix of Georgian and Victorian architecture. Its claim to fame was a spa. The water that bubbled to the surface here started its journey 5,000 years ago, around the end of the last Ice Age, slowly filtering through limestone. It was supposed to have healing properties. Drum remembered liking the taste of it when he’d come back to visit. He’d hoped it might return his memories. It hadn’t.

He pressed the buzzer at the desk and an officer appeared behind the screen.

“I’m here to see Inspector Gordon. I’m…PCSO Drummond.” He’d very nearly said detective constable.

“Wait there.”

Drum waited and after a few minutes a door opened on his right. The same officer beckoned him.

“Follow me.”

The moment Drum walked into the inspector’s room, he could tell the senior officer was pissed off. Drum had never met the guy before, but the way he was sitting and the angle at which he held his body told Drum he was annoyed. That made two of them. Drum put his bag on the floor and waited. The inspector sat behind a battered desk that looked older than Drum. He was in his fifties, broad-shouldered and weathered, with thinning grey hair and a face that suggested smiling wasn’t something he did often.

Drum kept quiet. Eventually, Gordon looked across at him.

“When I asked for another PCSO, I wanted someone local. Someone who knew the villages and understood the people. Instead, I’m sent a Metropolitan Detective Constable from London. PCSOs aren’t DCs or indeed, PCs, but I have to pay you as a DC. Out of my budget.”

Shit. “I’ll do a DC’s job, sir.”

“You will not.”

Drum opened his mouth, caught sight of the guy’s face and thought better of it.

Gordon’s eyes narrowed. “You think this is a joke?”

“No, sir.”

“Good.”

The silence stretched. Drum had become familiar with silence over the last three months. Doctors waiting for answers. Therapists waiting for the admission of feelings that he’d apparently need help to process once he allowed them out. People waiting for PTSD to break him. Some petty arseholes in therapy with him who tried to break him. He wasn’t in the mood to perform for a man who didn’t want him.

Gordon opened a file. “You’ve got quite a record. Commended three times. Worked firearms. Major investigations. Organised crime.” He turned a page. “Then there are the bits they don’t put in the recruitment brochure.”

Drum kept his expression blank.

“For my eyes only. Five months creating your new identity, then eighteen months undercover. Which clearly went wrong. They don’t say why.”

It hadn’t been Drum’s fault and if it didn’t say what happened in the folder, then he wasn’t volunteering the information.

“Hospitalisation. Extended leave. Mandatory three months rehabilitation at Clover House.” Gordon looked up. “You fit for duty, Drummond?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You hesitate before answering that?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Because I don’t need a hero and I don’t need a damaged officer. I need a secure pair of hands. An officer the public can rely on.”

The words landed harder than they should have. For a moment Drum was back in London. Smoke. Blood. Screaming. That would be him. The smell of burning. Almost him. Then water. Too much water. In his mouth. Choking him. His heart rate quickened. He forced the memories away before they had the chance to overwhelm him, took a deep breath and counted to ten. He also put his hands behind his back and fiddled with his bracelet, rubbing his thumb over the ball of amber with the dandelion seed inside. Trapped but still beautiful, still loved. Who’d given it to him? His mother? His heart calmed.

Gordon closed the file. “This isn’t London. Nobody cares what you did there. Around here your biggest excitement will be a drunk farmer arguing with his neighbour about a sheep, or two drivers on a narrow road, neither of whom will reverse, probably because they’re crap at it.”

“Sounds peaceful, sir.”

“Don’t mistake peaceful for easy.” The inspector leaned back in his chair. “Small communities remember everything. If you’re an arsehole, everyone knows by lunchtime. If you’re decent, they’ll still be talking about you years later.”