Snakes and Ladders

Chapter 3

3

Wendy felt her stomach rumble as she turned into the car park of Mildenheath Police Station, and quietly told herself she’d run across the road to the corner shop and grab herself something once she’d clocked in. Oversleeping wasn’t something she did often, even in the fog of confusion caused by ever-changing shift patterns and digital alarms, but she hoped she’d get away with it just this once.

She’d completely forgotten about the major roadworks in the town centre, only realising once she was in stationary traffic and a few yards past the last turning which’d allow her to take an alternative route.

She didn’t curse her forgetfulness too much, though; her mind had been elsewhere, and for the first time in a long time the reasons were positive. She and Xav had settled down well together since he’d moved in, and she was feeling content in her role at work.

She’d recently made the decision, after much deliberation, to put in for her inspector’s exams, having come to the realisation that she could indeed have a fruitful home life as well as a successful, forward-thinking career. It had taken her some time to realise that, and it was only after recognising that she’d been afraid of outranking her late father that she managed to come to terms with it and make the decision to move forward.

The whole team had been knocked for six by the revelations about Frank Vine, and Wendy had briefly wondered whether it was all worth it. The pursuit of justice seemed somewhat futile when one of their own team had been actively working against them and feeding information to a criminal gang, and she’d had a momentary existential wobble as a result. But it’d been Xav who’d focused her mind and allowed her to put things into perspective.

He’d reminded her that she had to look at the positives: there’d been a bad apple in the basket, and it’d been discovered and removed. They didn’t know how long Frank had been corrupt, but they could be certain things hadn’t got worse at all; they’d actually got better as a result of scraping out the rot.

Besides which, the team at Mildenheath CID had been fighting for its existence for years. With the rest of CID organised at a county level and — in the case of major crimes — often at a regional one, maintaining the town’s own satellite CID unit had been something of an anachronism. County headquarters at Milton House had been trying to bring Mildenheath’s resources under its banner for as long as Wendy could remember. The county’s first politically-elected Police and Crime Commissioner, Martin Cummings, had been a keen proponent of merging services, but had been forced out of his job after it was discovered he’d been merging himself with the services of trafficked rent boys.

The election of Penny Andrews to succeed him had looked to be the final nail in the coffin for Mildenheath CID, but their success rate combined with the rooting out of Frank Vine had given them breathing space — and the express support of the new Police and Crime Commissioner.

For Wendy, it sometimes felt as though going into work gave her respite. When she was at home, she spent more time overthinking things, causing herself undue stress and anxiety. Even though most of those problems were caused by work, being here gave her focus and allowed her to concentrate on the task in hand rather than worrying about things that’d either already happened and couldn’t be changed, or which might never happen anyway.

She parked her car in an empty space, and looked up at the brick building — an icon of seventies architecture, if those two words could ever go hand-in-hand. As she switched off her engine, her phone rang on the seat beside her. She glanced over and saw Jack Culverhouse’s name on the screen.

‘Hi,’ she said, answering it. ‘Yeah, I know, I know. I’m late. Sorry, it’s this new phone and the bloody stupid alarm. I’m literally in the car park now. I thought I was going to make it, but those sodding roadworks on the High Street held me up.’

‘Right, well you’ll have to go through them again now, won’t you? I need you over at Mildenheath Woods. There’s a body.’