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She never noticed. Later I would wonder if it was because she wasn’t used to drinking – that was what she had told me anyway. If the taste of alcohol, any alcohol, was so unfamiliar to her it was impossible to discern one from the other. Whatever the cause, it became easier after that, her tongue loosening, her gaze slipping, the drinks sliding down her without question. I could see her slipping away from herself, a boat, its moorings loosed.

After more drinks than I can now remember, I gripped her by the hand, pulled her up. Thinking that I just wanted to forget.

She didn’t resist, muttered something about taxis, about her car in a garage. But she slumped against me, heavier than I expected her to be, a dead weight against my shoulder, and I struggled, guiding her out of the bar, past a puddle of yellow vomit, into the dimly lit car park.

I had vague thoughts that we could have sex on the back seat of my car. But there were people, seemed like there were people everywhere. So instead I eased her into the passenger seat, slid the seatbelt around her.

I would take her home, back to mine. I would fuck her. Then I would take her wherever she needed to go.

Such was my plan, if you could call it that.

But something happened.

It was the window, I think. I should never have had the window ajar. I did it for myself, because the world was slip-sliding and unsteady and I needed to drive, didn’t want to get pulled over, so I opened the window, thinking that the salted air would help me, would sober me up. We were on the M4, were doing eighty, when it all went wrong.

She had been slumped, her cheek resting against the passenger window, when all of a sudden she started. Sat up. Looked at me. But this time it was a look of fear, cold hard dread. Then she began to scream. Again and again and again, the sound painfully loud in the confines of the car. She was a thing possessed, was fighting against the seatbelt, fighting against my hand as I tried to calm her, fighting against the locked passenger door.

I don’t remember her necklace coming off. I was trying to drive, trying to restrain her. But, as I hold it up in the cool sea air, I think this must have been when it had happened.

That was when I lost my temper.

I slammed the brakes on, stopped the car on the fast lane of the M4, flicking the central locking switch.

‘Get the fuck out!’

She had the door open before the sentence was even finished, was gone before I knew what had happened. I leaned over, pulled the door closed, stamped on the accelerator. Then I was gone.

I had driven almost all the way home, had been sucking in breaths of cool air, trying to calm myself down, trying to let the rage settle. I had pulled off the M4, was idling at a red light, when it hit me what I had done. Something washed over me, a swathe of guilt. She had simply been a way of forgetting, something to distract me from my life. The light turned to green and I took the roundabout in a fast sweep, turning back on myself onto the M4, now travelling the opposite way. I would pick her up. I would take her home. It would be the right thing to do.

I knew before I knew. Something in me piecing together what my conscious mind could not. Blue flashing lights. I had known then. I slowed. Saw the police cars. The ambulance. Nobody hurrying, no sirens. I put my foot down, sped away, trying not to vomit.

I turned on the television the next morning and saw her photo, with its rounded cheeks, its undecided hair. The newscaster’s face suitably sombre, as her cerise lips formed the words: Swansea-born woman, Emily Wilson, was killed last night on the M4.

I stare at Mara’s house. At its promise and its potential, all now gone to waste. And I reach down, pushing open the driver’s door. The gun is in my hand. But then, where else would it be? Because now it feels like it has become an extension of me. I stand for a minute, studying the silent street. And then I open my fingers and allow the gold necklace to slide from my hand, landing with a small splash in a waiting puddle.

I SIT IN
my car, just one amongst a sea of others. I watch police headquarters. He will be here today, I feel it in my gut. I watch the guard-house, the high walls, watch as people flood in, suited, uniformed, ready to start their working day. I wait.

I can’t shake it, can’t get the image from my mind. Emily, her head thrown back, gaze open, vacant. Her necklace catching in the street light. And then him, marching her onwards with a thousand-yard stare. I see it now, how it unfolded, just as if it had happened in front of me. I see Emily, sitting waiting, probably a little cowed by the noise and the booze, waiting for a friend who will never show up. I see him, selecting her, making his way towards the table in the window. Was she already drunk? Or did that come later? Did he help her with that, plying her with drinks, so that in the end she had no idea how much she’d had? Perhaps he was thinking she would make an easy lay, so soft, so unassuming. Escorting, half-carrying, her out of the bar, down the busy street, then putting her into a car – his car? – and driving, and maybe she comes to, maybe she starts to fight back, his plan crashing down around his ears. So he gets rid of her, letting her out in the centre of the M4. Telling himself that it is okay, that he didn’t actually kill her.

My phone begins to ring and I look down at it, see my mother’s number. I let it go to answerphone.

I have to see him. I have to talk to him.

There is a dim and distant part of me that recognises the danger in this. There is a part of me that knows I am running into a firestorm. But I cannot stop myself. Cannot shake the image of Emily lying dead under a tarp, of her mother crying, her father listless and stunned.

The thought crosses my mind that I should call Aden. Or Del. Or, hell, just 999. But what would I say? That I saw him, on a crowded night-time street; that he was helping a woman who had drunk too much? I need to talk to him. I need to understand.

I watch the gate, staring so intently that my eyes begin to pool with tears. And it is then that I see him, slipping out as others are going in. He is wearing uniform, a jacket that looks too warm for the weather. Isn’t looking at the people as they pass him, is coming out into the car park, his gaze fixed.

My hand goes to the door handle.

But something stays me. For a moment I sit there, staring at him, trying to understand what it is that I have seen.

He is carrying a gym bag on his shoulder. It looks to be heavy, the weight of its strap denting the jacket, leaving behind a knot of creases. I stare at the bag. What is it? What’s wrong with this picture? The fabric is straining, has been packed to its limit. A shape juts out of the side of it, warping the bag, and I stare at it and stare at it, trying to piece it all together.

What is that?

Then he reaches his car, slides the bag off his shoulder onto the ground, and the movement changes its shape, changes the way the shadows fall. And then, in that one heart-stopping movement, I know exactly what it is he is carrying.

ADEN STUDIED HIS
reflection, the yellowing knot above his eye, the fresher, bluer bruise that snaked its way along his forearm. He reached out with the fingers of his opposing hand, touched it, even though he knew he shouldn’t. Was rewarded with a sharp spike of pain. Shit! The locker room was quiet, smelled of stale sweat. Shift change had come and gone, and everyone had left now, out on patrol. Just Aden remaining behind, nursing his bruises.

He broke away from his reflection, pulling on his bulletproof vest.

It was a thousand years ago that he had woken with Charlie beside him, a thousand years since he kissed her goodbye.

He patted his pockets, would ring her. But then the pain shot through his arm again and he stopped. No, he’d wait. He would tell her tonight. It would be best if he didn’t worry her. The locker-room door swung inwards, bringing with it a breath of air into the pungent room.

‘Ade, you all right?’ Del was already in his uniform, his jacket pulled on. Squinted at Aden’s arm. ‘Shit, mate. Got you a good ’un.’

‘Yeah. I’ll live. Any luck?’

Del grimaced, shook his head. ‘Went round to Tony’s house – nothing. His car is gone. You really think he gave your information to Steve Lowe?’

Aden slid a clip of ammunition into his vest. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I do.’

‘Well, we’re going to keep looking. Everyone knows to keep their eyes peeled for him.’

Then a silence, in which they’re both thinking the same thing.

‘You don’t think he’d have . . .’

‘Mate,’ Aden fixed Del with a look, ‘I think I can confidently say I’ve got no clue what the hell Tony is going to do next.’ Then something else, a thought that had been sitting at the back of his mind, unnoticed. ‘Hey, you seen Rhys?’

Del started then, looking at him. ‘No. Why?’

‘He should be in by now. He didn’t partner with somebody else?’

‘No, I saw the teams leaving when I came in. He wasn’t with them.’

Aden stood there for a second, a sinking feeling in his insides. Pulled out his phone and dialled Rhys’s number. A pause. Then the answerphone. ‘Shit!’

Del stared at him. ‘I’ll go round to his house. You’re thinking Steve got to him first?’

Aden slipped his phone back into his pocket, moving quickly. Long strides towards the door, everything seeming unreal to him. ‘I hope not.’ Then a parp of sound, his mobile phone ringing. He started, fumbled for it. But before he could unravel it from the knot of fabric, the door flew open, knocking him off-balance. A police officer, young, fearful-looking. Aden dimly recognised him as Del’s partner. His face was grey, eyes red, looked like he’d been crying.

‘Did you hear?’

‘Hear what?’

‘They found the armourer. Dead.’

I PULL OPEN
the car door, duck inside so quickly that I bang my shoulder against the frame. The child is still watching me, his nappy hanging low, his finger now resolutely jammed into his left nostril. The Lowes’ house is still in silence. The curtains are still closed. They do not know that I am here. My heart is hammering so loudly that I can hear nothing else. I should have done it. Irrespective of the child and its wide-open gaze, I should have set the gun against the lock on the Lowes’ front door, pulled the trigger, moved into the house, up the stairs to where the parents lay asleep.

But now, under the scrutiny of a three-year-old child, my hands are shaking like leaves, and I can taste blind panic. My fingers go to the keys in the ignition. It’s okay. It will be okay. They will go to the hospital. They are parents and that is where their child is. They will go there. And I will go there.

I pull away from the kerb, steady, deliberately not speeding. I steer the car down the hill, can see the sea from here, sparkling blue. But still I am surrounded by the boxed council houses, the abandoned cars of Harddymaes in all its glory. I glance in the rear-view mirror. I can see the off-licence, the alleyway.

Whenever I think of that night, I remember the rain. The way it drove down, sweeping across the pavement. The grip of the car on the road, seemed to be painfully light, like at any minute it could be swept away. The call, shots fired, permission to arm. Out of the car, the rain beating against my head, so hard that it hurt. Loading the weapons.

I didn’t tell anyone about the other gun. The one I kept in the ankle-holster, hidden beneath my uniform trousers.

Then flying along, towards Harddymaes, sirens blaring. The adrenaline starting to course through my veins, and there’s no feeling like it in the world. Like riding the world’s greatest roller coaster, again and again and again. Then seeing the off-licence. The figures running.

I had found the gun – my gun – months previously. Had been doing a raid on a house. This old guy, done for threats to kill. There’d been talk of weapons, people saying that he was a hoarder, one of those end-of-days apocalyptic types. We swept through the house, black-booted locusts, the old guy shouting, telling us to fuck off, then bursting into tears. I found the gun under his mattress. It was a nice little Browning HP – single-action, 9 mm. I should have turned it in, should have put it into evidence along with all of the other shit we turned up that day. But I didn’t.

It wasn’t the first time I had taken things from a scene. It had developed over time into a habit, the collection of souvenirs. There was never any rhyme or reason to the things I took, just little pieces, things that caught my eye. A picture. A pen. A gun.

Then I was out of the car, the rain pounding, and I mean pounding. I was running on a surface as slick as sheet-ice. Into that alleyway – not a patch of light, just the sound of footsteps, somewhere ahead.

I don’t know why I started carrying the gun. It wasn’t like I was struggling for weaponry, not in work at least. But there was something about having it, this secret source of power that no one knew about. I started taking it with me wherever I went, tucked into my ankle-holster. It was my protection; a talisman, I suppose.

And that night, running and running, my heart just pounding like it would beat out of my chest, so much adrenaline that I was giddy with it. And then I saw something, or I thought I saw something.

I would wonder about that later on. Was it my mind, drowning in chemicals, struggling to make sense of a world that made no sense at all? Was that why I did what I did?

Before I knew what I was doing, my gun was up. My finger was moving, locking itself around the trigger. And the gun was kicking back, the darkness rent with the light of the muzzle-flash. And up ahead, a soft ‘Oof’.

Then there was more light, more sound, from beside me, behind me – all around me, it seemed.

Then nothing.