‘I know,’ King managed to say. ‘The investigation team told me before the trial.’
‘Yes,’ Gerrard said, sounding more melancholy than King had ever heard him. ‘I suppose they did. But after such a traumatic experience I was wondering how you felt – how you really felt? Never mind what you told the psychiatrist.’
‘I’m fine, sir. I just need to get back to work. Proper work.’
‘Very well,’ Gerrard smiled, seemingly satisfied. ‘As I’ve said, you’ll be taking care of the day-to-day running of the Unit and will report to Inspector Johnston here who’ll be overseeing things as a whole.’
‘Fine,’ King agreed, already rising from his chair, happy he’d heard everything he needed to before Johnston stopped him.
‘You’ve been working on the Crime Desk, I understand?’ Johnston finally spoke – her voice accentless and pleasantly toned. Designed to trap the unwary.
‘Yes,’ King confirmed, easing back into his chair.
‘Then are you aware there appears to be a serial offender preying on young children on the estate and surrounding areas?’ Johnston asked.
‘I am,’ King answered.
‘Not as serious as it could be, thank God, although we take all offences against children, particularly sexual offences, very seriously indeed.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ King went along with her, wondering where she was heading.
‘It’s time he was stopped,’ she insisted, ‘before he does something even worse.’
‘I understand,’ King assured.
‘Good,’ she smiled slightly – showing the tips of her straight white teeth as she turned to Gerrard to let him know she’d finished.
‘You start tomorrow,’ Gerrard told him. ‘We’ve sorted out an office over at Canning Town for you. It’s not much, but it’ll do. Your new team will meet you there in the morning and you can all get acquainted. I’m sure you’ll already know one or two of them.’
‘Probably,’ King shrugged and headed for the door.
‘Inspector Johnston will email you a list of the team members before tomorrow,’ he continued. ‘Give you a chance to look them over.’
‘Make sure you keep me fully informed,’ Johnston told him, with a trace of a warning in her voice.
‘Of course,’ he assured him, guessing that Johnston wouldn’t be slow in taking the credit for anything positive they achieved.
‘And be careful,’ Gerrard warned him as he headed through the door. ‘I hear the locals occasionally take potshots from the tower blocks at passing police officers with unwanted television sets.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ King smiled as he pushed himself from his seat and headed for the door.
The next morning, shortly after ten, King entered the small office on the second floor of Canning Town Police Station that used to belong to the now reassigned Crime Prevention Officer. His three charges were already there noisily sorting out their new desks and trying to find places to stash the huge amount of kit that every uniformed officer now possessed: body armour, utility belts, riot helmets, normal helmets, flat caps, CS gas, extendable truncheons, fixed truncheons, light jackets, heavy jackets and a seemingly endless number of other items. He knew all three of them by name and sight, although they’d never worked closely. None of them were distracted from their mission to sort out the office when he entered, choosing to acknowledge his presence in a more casual manner.
‘You must be mad to want to be in charge of this shit posting,’ PC Davey Brown accused him in his strong Glaswegian accent – his hair still cropped exactly as it had been in his days as a Royal Marine before a shoulder injury had forced him to retire when he was only twenty-one. He had a tough, unpleasant-looking face, other than his striking green eyes, all enhanced by a muscular body that made him appear shorter than his five-foot-ten inches. Since joining the Met four years previously, he’d established a reputation amongst his peers and the lowlife of Newham that was to be feared. ‘I heard you actually volunteered for this shit,’ he continued, stuffing his newly acquired drawers with kit.
‘Maybe,’ King played it cautiously, heading deeper into the office.
‘Just like you did,’ PC Renita Mahajan laughed at Brown who pulled a face of disgust.
‘Did I fuck,’ he insisted. ‘First rule of being a police officer – never volunteer for fucking anything.’
‘Well I volunteered,’ she proudly admitted, her bright smile adding to her attractiveness before she pushed her shiny, short black hair out of her face and returned to emptying the previous incumbent’s hordes of paperwork from her desk’s drawers and throwing them into a confidential waste bag. At only five-foot-five and the tender age of twenty-three, she made up for her shortcomings by remaining strong and athletic, fearless and tenacious. She had only three years’ service with the Met, but she was already confident and capable way beyond her years. ‘Better than driving around in a patrol car all day with some old fart who doesn’t want to get involved any more, delivering messages and taking crime reports.’
‘You’ll be wishing you were back in that patrol car soon enough when you’re walking around the Grove Wood Estate in the middle of the night on your own, hen,’ Brown smiled evilly.
‘Ignore these two,’ Danny Williams, the final member of the team, advised King. ‘They think they’re Laurel and Hardy.’
‘Who?’ Brown spat the question. Williams ignored him as he tried to close the tall metal locker he’d filled with equipment with no success, ramming it with his sizeable shoulder in frustration, before giving up and turning to King and straightening to his full six-foot-two, his lithe, athletic body augmented by his mahogany skin. He kept his Afro hair cropped so nothing would distract from his undeniably handsome face, although at only twenty-four some boyish features still remained.
‘We all volunteered,’ Williams ended the argument, ‘and so did a shitload more people, but we got picked because we’re the best.’
‘Aye,’ Brown interrupted. ‘Six months of this shit and I’ll have earned enough brownie points to fuck off to the TSG. Borough policing’s strictly for mugs. Territorial Support Group’s the real show.’
‘It’s the CID next for me,’ Williams explained.
‘And you?’ King asked Renita, who continued tidying her desk for a few seconds while she thought.
‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged. ‘Promotion maybe. What about you?’
‘I haven’t thought that far ahead,’ he admitted before Brown answered for him.
‘Have you not heard?’ Brown grinned. ‘Sergeant King here’s on accelerated promotion. Oh, he’s strictly just passing through on his way to the top.’
‘You’re on accelerated promotion?’ Renita asked, suspicious.
‘That’s the rumour.’ King knew he’d need to quickly earn their respect. ‘If that’s the way I want to go.’
‘If?’ Brown almost shouted. ‘Listen, pal – take some advice. Never look a gift horse in the mouth. Fucking accelerated promotion – easy life, eh.’
‘We’re not pals yet,’ King warned him. ‘Let’s start with Sarge and see how we get on, eh?’
Brown