Blood on the Tongue. Stephen Booth

       3

      A pair of shoes stood outside each door in the bare corridor. There were a set of trainers with thick rubber soles, some brown brogues split down the side, and a pair of high-sided Doc Martens. Right at the end were Eddie Kemp’s wellies, with melted snow running off them to form puddles on the floor. In the background, Nigel Kennedy was playing The Four Seasons.

      ‘Has he asked for a doctor?’ asked Ben Cooper.

      ‘A doctor?’ The custody sergeant frowned as he checked over the paperwork carefully. ‘No. All he said was that he takes two sugars in his tea, when I’m ready.’

      ‘Give him the chance to ask, just in case, Sarge.’

      The sergeant was well over six feet tall. He had the weariness about him that Cooper had seen all custody officers develop after a few months processing prisoners. They saw far too much of the wrong end of life. They saw far too many of the same prisoners coming in and out, over and over again.

      ‘Why, what does he reckon is wrong with him?’ said the sergeant. ‘Apart from having his sense of smell amputated?’

      ‘He is a bit ripe, isn’t he?’

      ‘Ripe? Putrescent is the word that springs to mind.’

      There was a strange, rancid odour about Eddie Kemp – not his breath, but the smell of his body, a sourness that oozed directly from his pores. It seemed to eddy in the air around him when he moved, restrained only by his clothes from overpowering anyone within twenty yards. When his old overcoat and body warmer came off, the paint on the walls had almost begun to peel.

      They had bagged up Kemp’s outer clothes as quickly as they could and sent a PC around the custody suite with disinfectant. There were three prisoners on the women’s side, and they’d soon be complaining again. Cooper thought the smell would stay with him all day, like his frozen foot.

      ‘I hope they’re not going to be too long coming to interview him,’ said the sergeant. ‘One of our prostitutes down the corridor there has been reading up on the Human Rights Act. There might be a clause about infringement of a prisoner’s right to fresh air, for all I know.’

      ‘I don’t know who’s going to interview Eddie Kemp, but rather them than me,’ said Cooper. ‘Besides, I think he might have some popular support out on the streets. I’m sure three of his mates were at the café. But he’s the only one we had a witness ID for.’

      ‘Members of the public can’t be allowed to take the law into their own hands,’ said the sergeant, sounding like a man reading from a script.

      Late the previous night, the two seriously injured young men had been found wandering by the road in Edendale’s Underbank area, a compact warren of streets that ran up the hillside yards from one of the main tourist areas of the town. Although they had been badly beaten, it had been impossible to get a reason from them for the attack.

      This morning, the police had been having difficulty identifying the assailants. Most of the people in the area had seen nothing, they said. But a couple who had looked out of their bedroom window when they heard the noise of the assault had said they recognized Eddie Kemp, who was their window cleaner. Everyone knew Eddie. Cooper had felt the disadvantages of local fame himself, so he sympathized with Kemp a little.

      ‘By the way, I checked the names of the assault victims,’ he said. ‘They’re both regulars of yours, Sarge. Heroin dealers off the Devonshire Estate.’

      Along the corridors, it was approaching the end of Spring, according to Nigel Kennedy.

      ‘I can’t understand why the radio briefing said the incident was suspected to be racially motivated,’ said Cooper. ‘One of the victims is Asian, but the other is white.’

      ‘Default position,’ said the sergeant. ‘We cover our backs, just in case. Talk about the inmates of the asylum …’

      Recently, a number of asylum seekers had been dispersed to Derbyshire, and some were housed in Edendale’s vacant holiday accommodation. Until now, many residents had rarely seen anyone of a different ethnic origin in their town unless they ran restaurants and cafés, like Sonny Patel, or were tourists and didn’t count. The sudden appearance of Iranians, Kurds, Somalis and Albanians queuing at the bus stops that winter had been like someone dropping a drum of herbicide into a pond and watching it seethe and bubble. For the first time, a National Front logo had been scrawled on the window of an empty shop in Fargate, and the British National Party were said to be holding recruitment meetings at a pub near Chesterfield.

      ‘Your prisoner’s a bit of a joker,’ said the sergeant. ‘He gave his name as Homer Simpson.’

      ‘Sorry about that.’

      ‘Oh, think nothing of it. You’d be surprised how many Homer Simpsons we get in here. Some days, I think there must be a convention of them in town. In the old days, it used to be Mickey Mouse, of course. But that name went out of fashion among the custody suite intelligentsia. Anyway, I told him I had to register him in the guest book, otherwise he wouldn’t get his breakfast in the morning.’

      ‘I suppose it gets a bit much.’

      ‘Water off a duck’s back, my son. You’ve seen the guidelines, haven’t you? “All idle and foolish remarks will be disregarded”. It helps no end when some inspector in nappies tries to tell me what to do. You can ignore them and say, “It’s in the guidelines, ma’am.”’

      ‘What’s the point of the music, by the way?’ said Cooper.

      ‘It relaxes the customers,’ said the sergeant. But Cooper thought he sounded a bit defensive.

      ‘Does it?’

      ‘So they tell me.’

      The sergeant paused. They both listened to the Vivaldi for a moment. Kennedy had just reached Summer.

      ‘It’s the inspector’s idea,’ said the sergeant.

      ‘Ah,’ said Cooper. ‘She’s been on a course, has she?’

      ‘Been on a course? I’ll say she’s been on a bloody course! Show me the week she’s not on a course. This one was called “Conducting a Resources Audit of Your Public Interface”. What the hell does that mean? Mark my words, she’ll have us putting mirrors and potted palms in here next. Moving the doors and the desk to make the energy flow better or some such rubbish.’

      ‘Feng shui,’ said Cooper.

      ‘Sorry?’

      ‘Feng shui.’

      ‘I think you’ve caught a cold standing out in the snow,’ said the sergeant.

      ‘Making the energy flow,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s Japanese.’

      The sergeant stared at him. ‘’Course it is,’ he said. ‘I must be stupid.’

      He was much too tall for the counter he worked at, and he leaned awkwardly to write in the custody record. Unless Health and Safety had conducted a proper workplace assessment in here, there would be more compensation to pay out in a year or two, when the sergeant was walking like Quasimodo. But by then, he’d be haunted by the sound of Nigel Kennedy