In Too Deep

Chapter 2

2

The whisky glass was feeling heavier in Jack Culverhouse’s hand with every passing minute. He’d seen with his own eyes how many police officers of his age had ended their careers at the bottom of a bottle, but he was determined to stay in control. One drink a night was about all he was having at the moment. Two, perhaps, if it had been a particularly tough day, which it often was.

The dreaded drink had nearly finished his career once already — he had been back in the saddle only a few months since being suspended from Mildenheath CID during a recent double-murder investigation. The killings had shaken the major crimes unit at Mildenheath for a number of reasons. Having happened barely weeks after one of their own, Luke Baxter, had been killed in the crossfire while apprehending a serial killer, their most recent high-profile case had seen them investigating the murders of two paedophiles. Culverhouse had been of the opinion — and he’d made this known — that whoever had carried out those killings was doing them a favour. The powers-that-be didn’t quite agree, leaving him sidelined with only a bottle of brown liquid for company.

He was used to not having people around — that had always been the way since his wife, Helen, had walked out on him all those years ago, taking his daughter with her. But one thing Jack Culverhouse could not live without was his work. That had been his raison d’être — the whole reason he got up in the morning. Having that taken away from him had almost finished him off.

Retirement wasn’t something he ever considered, although he wasn’t far off being able to take his full police pension if he wanted it. He knew some forces tended to pressure officers into retirement after a certain age or a certain number of years’ service, and he was grateful that he had Charles Hawes as his Chief Constable — a man who was far too wishy-washy to ever make real waves in policing, but who was far more sympathetic to Jack’s style of policing than most people. He knew that when Charles Hawes left his post, it would be the beginning of the end for him.

Jack was old school, and he wasn’t afraid to admit it. He’d seen the changes in policing, seen how it had become a glorified office job. He refused to accept the winds of change, though, and carried on regardless in his own way. He was fortunate in that Mildenheath CID had a certain degree of autonomy which a lot of major crimes units didn’t. It hadn’t been subsumed into a bigger, faceless unit at county — or regional — level and had managed to resist any major reforms for a number of years, much to the chagrin of the county’s elected Police and Crime Commissioner, Martin Cummings.

But it wasn’t work that was on Jack Culverhouse’s mind as he sat in silence, save for the sound of his own heavy breathing, the air whistling through his nostrils as he nursed the crystal glass in his hand. It was Emily. The daughter he hadn’t seen for nine and a half years. She’d been three years old at the time her mother had taken her, and now would be getting on for thirteen. It seemed impossible that she would be a teenager in a matter of weeks — that sweet little girl with blonde pigtails, barely waist height, singing nursery rhymes back at him. He tried not to think about it too much. It wasn’t doing him any favours.

It wasn’t a situation he was ever going to be able to accept or deal with, but it had started to become normal. First of all there was Emily’s fourth birthday. Then came the day when they’d been gone a year. Time had blurred, and before he knew it he’d realised that Emily had been gone for longer than she’d been with him. A few years later it was the same milestone with Helen. Looking back now, the time when they were around seemed like a blip on the radar of Jack Culverhouse’s wider timeline. And that hurt.

Just as he’d started to come to terms with things and realise that they weren’t going to change, Helen had turned up on his doorstep unannounced. That was almost a year ago now, but when he closed his eyes he could still see her face in front of him. The same as he remembered, but older, more tired. Whenever he thought back to happier times — times when she and Emily had both been around — it was that jaded, haggard face that he saw rather than the younger, more vibrant Helen. Try as he might, he couldn’t visualise how she used to look.

It wasn’t that she’d turned up out of the blue that hurt; it was the fact that it seemed to be for completely no reason whatsoever. She didn’t have anything new to tell him — other than the fact that she’d been diagnosed with some sort of mental disorder — and the things that she did tell him turned out to be mostly lies. Like the story about having moved out to Spain, for instance. Jack had quickly been able to find out that was a lie by getting in touch with a police contact in Alicante, who was able to confirm that there had been no record of Helen living in Spain at any point over the past several years.

Even though she’d been as flaky and elusive as ever, he couldn’t help but be hurt all over again when she’d left. They hadn’t parted on the best of terms, but what was she to expect? You don’t just disappear for eight and a half years, turn up out of the blue one day and expect everything to be fine. The problem was that she just couldn’t see that. It was as if she’d turned up solely to have a dig at him. No information, no Emily, no nothing.

But he’d done angry. He’d done irate. He’d done exasperated. Now there was only hurt and regret.

Jack, like everyone, had a tipping point when it came to alcohol, where if he drank too much he became irritable and unreasonable — more so than usual, that is. But his recent ration of just one or two glasses of whisky a night had put him regularly in the zone where he became reflective and regretful. And it was a feeling of regret that overwhelmed him as he stared glassy-eyed at the mobile phone on the arm of the sofa. He had a contact number for Helen, the one she’d used last year when she came back on the scene. He knew, however, that it wasn’t a permanent number and that in all likelihood she would have already moved on again. Another phone, another country, another life.

In a way, part of him hoped that was the case, and while she didn’t necessarily need to hear what he had to say, but he had to say it nonetheless. Although he wanted to let her know how he felt, he still couldn’t shake that stubborn alpha-male ego that lay at the core of Jack Culverhouse. Deep down he knew that he was doing this more for himself than anyone else.

He slugged back the last mouthful of whisky, feeling the liquid warming his throat as it slipped down towards his stomach, before picking up the phone and scrolling through the contact list to Helen’s last-known number. He looked at it for a moment, then decided to take the plunge.

The few seconds that it took for the call to connect seemed like an age. Then came the words that he had always expected to hear.

‘The person you’re calling is not available. Please leave a message after the tone. When you have finished leaving your message, please hang up.’

The beep seared through Jack’s skull, mixing and mingling with the effects of the alcohol. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard, trying to fight back what he knew must come out.

‘Helen. It’s me. It’s Jack.’